Month: March 2018

Nearly Spring Haiku

nearly spring

Most likely I am guilty of slaughtering a venerable form of Japanese poetry. But I must admit to loving the simplicity, the challenge and the possibilities for humor and juxtaposition that Haiku provides.

It is Nearly Spring here in my little part of Canada, that aching time of seasonal limbo when we hover between the lingering cold and the coming green. A lot of snow has melted, yes, but certainly not all. The ground that has appeared again isn’t green but grey. The trees still look bare except if you examine them closely, then they reveal their humble bud beginnings.

These Haiku poems I share today are a form of therapy for me during Nearly Spring. I confess to eagerly awaiting True Spring with only tiny shreds of patience. These humble lines of five syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables help me cope.

Nearly Spring Haiku 2018

Spring ready to leap
But winter will not release
Its icy talons

Have you every thought
Spring sprung in February?
Poor befuddled fool

Snow post March twenty
Feels like a wet soggy slap
Across your bare cheek

Brownish greyish gunk
Never looked so beautiful
As on a thaw day

The snow blanket goes
Revealing the plows scrappings
Suburb detritus

Melted mini-lakes
Make some of the sidewalks seem
The place for canoes

Tiny buds appear
At the tree branch fingertips
Peeking at the sun

Spring surprise party
As things hidden for long months
Grin at us again

Green will soon o’er take
Winter’s ice-blue dominance
Time guarantees it

 

by Ronald Kok, March 24, 2018

Florence + the Bunny

florence 1

A simple post from me – pen and ink drawing of Florence Welch, one of my favorite voices in the music world today. The photo I drew from comes from the little booklet in a Florence + the Machine CD on my rack.  I didn’t do any pencil work on this first but jumped right in with the ink – always a challenge when you can’t erase. The bunny in her lap looks like some other kind of creature but…

That’s why it’s called sketching, I suppose.

florence 2

Blasted Birch

Blasted Birch

Ronald Kok, Blasted Birch, 2018, chalk pastels on paper

Part of my week is tending to a small art studio in the day program where I work. Once in awhile, I’ll pull out a different kind of medium as a challenge. I know that it is easy to get too comfortable with one medium. You get used to it and suddenly feel that you have to cling to that all the time, almost like a security blanket. The problem with that is it can stifle new forms of expression. So I will personally use different media to keep myself fresh and will use the same approach with the artists I help guide in their creativity.

This week I pulled out the chalk pastels and encouraged a couple of my artists to use them. I showed them how cool they can be to blend and displayed some of the different effects you can get with them. Then, as they were drawing, I started doodling myself with the pastels on a piece of brown paper, blending colors and making layers. I ended up with the drawing above.

I always find it fascinating to begin with no clear end in mind. That is kind of counter intuitive to all the seminars we attend and books we read on paths to success and having a purpose-filled life, etc., etc. The concept of goals and setting out your path to achieve them has always rubbed against the grain for me. There is nothing inherently wrong with making goals, of course. But it can, at times, stifle the serendipitous.

As I drew, a stand of birch trees emerged. I was simply trying to get an impressionistic feel of a forest in late fall/early winter. But after I was done, I realized there was a melancholy feel to this, and it reminded me of photos I’ve seen from World War I, after a copse of trees has been blasted apart by artillery; or of the remains of a woods after a forest fire has marched a path of destruction. How did I get there? I’m not sure. Certainly, as I look at this drawing I can’t help but feel I’ve made something reflective of my state of mind, my perspective on my life as a whole right now. There is a part of me that feels blasted, kind of torn up and scorched. In some ways, I think I made a self-portrait here. Maybe that happens more freely when you begin with no clear end in mind.

The good news? You can blast a bunch of birch – either through war or fire or change of seasons – and it will come back. There will be green again. Buds will form, life returns, and hope appears.

That is something I need to be reminded of when I am feeling shredded, when things look grey all around me. An image like this captures a moment in time but never, ever the full picture.

Not a bad thing to keep in mind if you, like me, are not where you want to be right now.