Harbor Pilots

Hello Cadre. Good morning. Good morning. Thursday. It is Thursday 9th January. My name is Kathy Joy. My Cadre handle is Speak Wonder. And my theme on Thursday caregiver day is Harbor Pilots. And as mentioned last week during the live, we're going to do haiku together. Many of you who've been with me for a while know that I'm a word nerd. I love words. I roll in them like a baker rolls in dough. I love words. I love the texture of them, I love the feeling of them in my mouth. I just love words, always have.

And I love poetry. Haiku is one of my go to art forms and I thought we'd do a collaborative one today. Today. And it's, it is a form of caregiving, finding words and describing things, describing what's going on in our lives, synchronizing what we're experiencing. You don't have to be a poet to be a haiku artist. And you don't even have to be a haiku artist. You can just listen in and enjoy what's going on here. I haven't literal light pole coming out of the top of my head. So funny what you see in the background when you go on to your live stream.

So if somebody could send me a heart or some sort of emoji, a sunshine or a snowflake, let me know what the weather's like in your corner of the world. It's so great to speak across time zones and into your living room, your car, your office, your gym, your walk, your hike, wherever we find each other. We are complex human beings with creative tendencies in different ways. Now if somebody mentions the word haiku, which is Japanese poetry, the word haiku to somebody it might be so ethereal that if they're not a words person, it just seems confusing, perplexing.

The same way that geometry or trigonometry or algebra feels when I say that because I'm not a math person, that's not to polarize us, that's just to identify the fact that as humans we have tendencies and leanings in different directions. Sometimes it's math, sometimes it's literature, sometimes it's sci fi, sometimes it's crime. The different genres we love when we're netflixing or reading or browsing the news, we are all drawn to something that's unique to our personality. So I thought as a self nurturing practice today we could do collaborative haiku.

By the end of this live stream we will have done one in even if I have to do most of it myself. I think It'd just be a lot of fun. So by definition, briefly, a haiku, Japanese poetry usually has no title, and it has five syllables and then seven and then five. And it's a great way to. In a way, it's an abbreviation, but in another way, it's an enhancement of the words. It's often. Haiku traditionally refers to something in nature. It can refer to anything. I thought today we do here a caregiver haiku.

What do you think? So let's begin. Oh, another thing I wanted to mention about haiku is that it could be a journaling prompt. A lot of times, maybe you, I don't know, maybe you have no problem letting the words flow. But when I'm ready to journal, I'm hard pressed as to what to write. And so if I can think about my day and, you know, a journal and a diary are two separate things. A diary is a line by line description of what you did today, what the temperature was, where you went. Journal is more thoughts and feelings.

And so in journaling, a lot of people like to do gratitude journaling. Haiku could do that. You could think of something you're grateful for in three simple lines, and you could just boil it down to five syllables and then seven and then five. The first haiku I'd like to share with you is inspired by Colleen's comment in the community feed. And she says. She says, you are more than your trauma. That's in there. And I counted it, and it's seven syllables. So I wrote the first line. Please remember this.

Five syllables. Please remember this. Line two, you are more than your trauma. Seven. Third line is five. Again, you are so much more. Hi, Jules. So the complete haiku is, please remember this. You are more than your trauma. You are so much more. Three lines says a lot. It says a lot. And I thought maybe our collaborative today could be titled Polar Plunge. Oftentimes in January, especially on the first, but sometimes mid January or late January, you'll hear of a winterfest in your town. Now, if you're from the South, God bless you, you're not going to have a polar plunge because the water where you live doesn't get terribly cold.

But in the Midwest and Minnesota, Pennsylvania, places like that, we have whole lakes, entire lakes freeze over. Lake Erie has been known to freeze over all the way to Canada. And so people will do fundraisers or just for the sake of being, you know, kind of crazy, we'll go into the cold water very briefly, get back out and get a warm towel. I have nothing but Admiration for those folks. Not gonna throw shade on them because that's an adventure that they want to have. Good on you. Not me. I'll watch.

I'll watch on Facebook or on tv. I'll watch you jump into those freezing waters. So let's title our collaborative haiku Polar plunge. Now, who can give me five syllables? Now, it doesn't have to be a literal toss into the ocean or to the lake or the pond or the creek. Out here in Pennsylvania, we call a creek a crick. I'm calling myself out as a country girl. It doesn't have to be a literal polar punch, but it could be. Or it could be symbolic, like what it feels like to open the door to the cold air coming in.

Can somebody give me five syllables for the haiku Polar plunge? And we'll have our first line. Jewel says our neighboring town does the polar plunge for fun. Yeah, it's a phenomenon. Let's go on. While somebody on the live is thinking of five syllables, let's go on to another haiku that I put down inspired by Stephanie Irwin. This morning on her live stream, we were talking about nourish. That's the word that has just been hinging itself to her heart in these early days of 2020. And I went into the comments and I wrote nourish and flourish.

And she decided that was a really great way to describe what happens when we nourish ourselves as caregivers. It helps us to flourish. Nourish and flourish. Nourish and flourish. First line of a haiku. Five syllables. Link arms with your Cadre peeps. There's seven. That's my second line. Caregiving for you. Five syllables. Let me read the whole thing to you. Nourish and flourish. Link arms with your Cadre peeps. Caregiving for you. Going move my laptop over a tad. Feel, like all over the place with my reading.

My printer quit. I need to get over to the store, the repair store, and get my printer fixed so I can just copy this off and read it to you. Does anybody have a first five? Dipping. Diving. I see. Cold plunge. Thank you, Jules. You got seven in. That's excellent. Yes. Diploma being diving. Icy cold plunge. I love it. Okay, so that's going to be the middle line of our haiku. We're titling it Polar plunge. And somebody step up next to Jules or Jules, give us another line that has five syllables now.

Yeah, I love collaborating. This haiku is inspired by a cardinal that caught my eye this morning. If it had a title, it could be photobomb. I like that title. Photobomb. Wild birds fascinate tufted titmouse upstage by a splash of crimson. That's exactly what happened. I love wild birds. And whenever a tufted titmouse lights on my feeder, which is right outside this window, it's so cool because they have that little tuft. They have these big, perky, beady, like shiny black eyes, and they're tan and they're just really cute.

It's called a tufted titmouse. And they're year round in northwest Pennsylvania. Once in a while, I have the privilege of seeing a nesting mom with her little hatchlings. And so when they come to the feeder, I get super excited. So I have my my phone camera at the ready. I saw the tufted titmouse. As soon as I got it in focus to take the shot, it flew off. And I was sorely disappointed because I missed it. However, in the background, there's a splash of red and it's a cardinal. And that's how my haiku came about.

Wild birds fascinate tufted titmouse upstaged by a splash of crimson. And finally, I would like to share my very first haiku. It was in sixth grade. Mrs. Chewy was teaching English and let's have winter fun. There's five syllables. Jules, you are my rock star. Can you think of five more? And then we'll have three lines for our haiku. Yeah. Why am I shouting? Because I'm excited. If you can give me five more syllables, we're gonna be golden. While Jules is thinking of her third line, five syllables to the poem polar Plunge.

I'm going to read to you my first haiku from the sixth grade. We lived in sunny Florida at the time, and we were not only beach people and intercoastal waterway people who water skied, but our family loved, especially me and my brothers growing up. We loved playing in the rainwashed gullies that would fill up after a thunderstorm. Now the thunderstorms in Florida come fast and hard and they fill up all the culverts and gullies. And then it's sunny again. It's just a cool thing. And so, as a child growing up in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, I spent many an afternoon out in the rain.

Mom didn't shoo us in unless it got really stormy. So back to Mrs. Shuey, my sixth grade teacher. She was teaching us the art of haiku. I didn't know I was going to fall in love with it until I did. And she challenged us for homework to write A haiku about something in nature. She reminded us that it's five syllables and then seven and then five. And she said, try to make the last line a synopsis of what happened. Try to make your third line a description of how you felt in the moment. Well, I wrote this and it has actually lodged in my brain as a memory.

I think I ran across my sixth grade cursive writing a while back and saw this. But here it is, my very first haiku for you today. Rumble of thunder, flash and pulse of jagged light. God takes my picture. You like that? Rumble of thunder, flash and pulse of jagged light. God takes my picture. Haiku is fun and interesting and unique for its own sake. It can also be an expression of how you interpret your day, a playful way of engaging with your kids or grandkids. It can be a journaling technique and it can stand alone as something interesting.

We did in community today on Caregiver day. So we have tweaking out that last line. You want me to help? And that's how we'll wind up today's Harbor Pilots live stream on Caregiver Day. This is how we're nurturing one another in community is by doing something creative together. Some people do crafts. I craft words. Thanks for joining me for listening. And let's think of a third line, Jules. And anybody who can pop in here wants to. So we have let's have the first line to be let's have winter fun.

And the second line is dipping, diving, Icy cold plunge. Love it. We've got the third line, vigorous brisk chill. Jules, you nailed it. That is polar plunge. And Jules, give me a thumbs up or hearts emoji. If I have your approval and permission to post this collaborative haiku in the community conversation, is that okay with you? That's so cool. I think the discipline of boiling down our thoughts to specific amounts of words is really good for us. It's like doing a crossword puzzle or if you're a fan of math, it's like working out an algebra problem.

Or if you are a real nerd about making sure your bank balance checks out. It's like having a ledger that matches to the pen. It's so satisfying to have that precision. And Jules, thank you. Yes, I appreciate that you are happy to have that posted in the community feed and I think people are going to going to enjoy that. If you like this live, tell somebody and maybe they'll do a replay. So not sure what I have for you next week. I don't think I'm going to be preemptive. I think I'm going to see what bubbles up.

We have Shannon Paul comedy in the chaos. I feel like there's something before Shannon. I should have looked at that. Consult your Cadre lives to see what's coming up and enjoy the journey. Today is Thursday when I was working. I'm retired now at the office. My one friend would say, hey, happy Thursday. It's the eve of Friday. So happy eve of Friday, January 9, and have a great rest of your day. I'm going to go play Scrabble. Old world Scrabble, like with the board and the little wooden, you know, tiles with my friend Laura, and we're going to eat popcorn and watch movies in her cozy living room, and it's going to be great.

So that's going to be this afternoon. I'm not a free spirit, although it looks like I am one today. I am very tethered to my mom, who's 93, and that is my caregiver story. And we're having some bumps and speed bumps right now. I'm able to get away for, for some mental health this afternoon for Scrabble and popcorn and movies. And I'm blessed to be able to do so. Blessed to be with you in the haiku moment. It's been great. And I'll see you next week. Thank you for being the community that I go to again and again for input, and I am also honored to be able to give a little bit of input as a real person in the real world.

Cheers, blessings and step into the light today.