I discovered haiku and its implications very late in life, but was it by chance? After taking the risk to write, after poking fun at the worst, it was close to home, in my neighbourhood, that I rediscovered wonder. With a sense of restraint, by focusing on details, unusual or trivial, I’ve tried to reveal the beauty in the material, to offer a touch of eternity to the everyday. Then, further away, I went on. In this other quest, capturing little things is perhaps a way “to awaken to the high by turning to the low” (kogô-kizoku): to access life’s essence, even in the most everyday experiences. Even if Nabokov (who I must admit is not Japanese), pointed out the risk of breaking the “thin veneer of immediate reality ... spread over natural and artificial matter” and “descending upright among staring fish.” It doesn’t matter to me; I’ve already descended.

Unpublished.

Work in progress.