Bus exhaust

One fun part of sharing a haiku every day is that on days when I don't write a new one, I get to go back through old notebooks and the mounds of crumpled scraps of paper on my dresser to find a likely candidate.

Today I picked up an old green notebook from the bookshelf. I hadn't opened it in years, but the sight of it has always inspired some subconscious good feeling. Judging from the dated entries, it's from 1999/2000 and full of so many ideas that I scarcely remember -- some of which later turned into actual projects (and can be re-incorporated into those newer projects...), but most of which are just scraps floating in the pages, waiting to be remembered and polished or expanded.

The good feeling it inspires is a combination of what I was doing at the time and the physical book itself. The journal is such a satisfying size (4"x 6") and thick enough to have some heft. It has to be one of my favorite store-bought journals ever. As for what I was doing, I was more closely involved with editing South by Southeast at that point, was still living in Richmond where I was writing and sharing a lot of haiku and other poetry and short fiction, and maybe most importantly, I was just starting to discover the fields of book arts and artists' books.

Lesson learned: go back to your old notebooks once in a while! You were younger then, and fresher! And now you're older and wiser and more able to follow through on those spasms of inspiration!

In any case, back on task. I don't remember writing this haiku but am glad to rediscover it:

hot bus exhaust --
the homeless man describes
Cambodia