Paying attention …

… First Known When Lost: Fallen.

Caterpillars and human beings: each of us in the midst of our own singular journey, crossing a brief, bright space from one dark wood to another.

Am I oversimplifying? Anthropomorphizing? Sentimentalizing? If you spend time with the haiku of the masters (Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Shiki), you will soon become intimately acquainted with the lives and fates of fireflies, cicadas, spiders, fleas, mosquitoes, flies, caterpillars, and butterflies (to name but a few). You will come to realize that, in this existence of ours, notions of oversimplification, anthropomorphization, and sentimentality are beside the point. You will learn to banish modern irony from your life.