silent – Whippet Wisdom – a Highland Journey

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In this week’s Discover Challenge we are invited to post about a place that means something special to us and we can interpret this any way we wish. This challenge coincides with my completion of ‘Carpe Diem Haiku First Winter Retreat 2016 – Find the Silence’ where we were invited to find the silence and create haiku, haiga or tanka every day for thirty days.

This is a beautiful time of year to write about silence and connect with that calm place within ourselves.

winter silence
so many boats asleep
on dry land

More than half of my daily writings on ‘Finding the Silence’ were posted on twitter and I am sharing some of them here to show the many moments that inspired me to find the silence both outside and inside of myself.

the silent robin
awaits our return
eyes sparkle

The haiku below were previously posted on twitter and made me reflect more deeply. I added prose and created a double haibun for the blog in Frozen Footsteps.

frost rests
in silent caress
of the dawn

stillness
before the ski slopes
open to laughter

One fellow blogger commented that I am carrying the silence with me. It feels that way and I believe the accumulative effect of focusing on silence every day AND writing about it helps you to carry the silence from one day to the next.

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Fellow blogger Mark Aldrich has written many posts about Egyptian photo-journalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid, also known as Shawkan. He has been held in prison without charge for more than three years and he misses the sky. On ciluna27’s Blog you can read more background information about the #SkyforShawkan initiative that was created on twitter where fellow photographers can post photographs of the sky for Shawkan.

After posting several photographs of the sky at #SkyforShawkan I found silence here too. Silence in the beauty of the many photographs posted here, silence in the invisible space where people who care about human rights come together.

I began to create haiga in aid of the campaign for Shawkan’s release and some of them took me to a completely different dimension of silence.

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One year later Shawkan is still in prison. I have created more haiga for the campaign and shared them on twitter. ciluna’s27 blog created a new and beautiful post on 12th December 2017 featuring many new photographs for the #SkyforShawkan campaign which include five of these haiga. You can read this post and see the images here.

Silence was to be found in so many places, including indoors.

candle light
warms the imagination
of shorter days

More than anything I became aware of the silent communication from something that is so much bigger than ourselves, the silent communication from nature and the silent communication and understanding between Eivor and Pearl. I could have written the haiku below every day for thirty days:

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silence
a quiet breath
of love

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With love to you all,

Eivor, Pearl and Xenia xxx

Photographs by Xenia Tran, edited in lr.

Camera: Lumix Panasonic FZ38, settings: Landscape and iA.

In response to Daily Post Discover Challenge: Finding Your Place

To see thirty days of contributions about silence from all participants please visit: Carpe Diem Haiku First Winter Retreat 2016 – Find the Silence

Daily Post: Silent

a black whippet in a blue winter coat on a frozen forest trail

Last week’s footsteps look so fresh on the frozen path where our paws leave no mark. The warm glow of the morning sun welcomes us like long lost friends and in this silence I feel like coming home. Coming home to all that is well in the world, to all the magic that nature has to offer and to the simple ways in which the sparkling frost on the trees connects us to the magic within ourselves.

frost rests
in silent caress
of the dawn

a blue and white whippet in a pink snood and silver winter coat on a frozen forest trail

I look up at the snow covered mountain against the blue sky and my mind wanders into the green and purple heathers of September, the view down over the glen and beyond the Monadliath. Winter has landed early here and we change the paths we walk with every season. Wrapped in the arms of nature we go where she leads.

stillness
before the ski slopes
open to laughter

With love from Eivor, Pearl and Xenia xxx

Photographs by Xenia Tran, unedited.

Camera: Lumix Panasonic FZ38, setting: iA.

I posted both haiku on twitter as part of my daily ‘Find the Silence’ reflections for Carpe Diem Haiku’s Winter Retreat and revisited the parts of the walk that inspired the haiku to create this haibun for dVerse Haibun Monday.

This haibun appears in:

which was published in December 2017 and is now available from Amazon in Europe and North America.

In 2022, we were delighted to learn that Chiaroscuro – Darkness and Light, is going to the moon. It is one of the poetry anthologies selected by Dr Samuel Peralta to be enclosed in time capsules and launched to the Moon, as a message-in-a-bottle to the future.

The Anthology will be part of The Polaris Collection, Dr Peralta’s payload associated with an Astrobotic Griffin/NASA VIPER mission, landing in the vicinity of the Lunar South Pole in November 2024.

You can read more about this collection here and more information about the Lunar Codex here.

The poem is also included in our first full-length collection Sharing Our Horizon, published in September 2018, available in paperback and ebook formats from bookstores and online retailers.