(KOBAYASHI ISSA, 1763-1828)

 
UKI-GUSA TO MISHI
MA NI IKE  NO KORI
KANA
 
While I looked at the lilly-pads
The pond
Froze

– Issa
 
I have a pal who elected to stay in Japan rather than leave, once his tour in World Famous Fighter Squadron 151 was done. He has risen to become a Gaijin well known for his insight into the inscrutable East, which turns out to be much more scrutable than you would think, if you just slow down a little and think about what is going on.
 
He shares his insights regularly through a sort of newsletter on Japanese affairs as they pertain to national security, To frame his analysis, he appends a haiku to each report.
 
I liked the one that came this morning, since the pool at Big Pink is going the other way. Slowly, ever so slowly, the ice lozenge in the middle of the green cover is receding. But Issa’s poem resonated strongly.
 
He wrote over 20,000 of them in his life. Issa was his pen-name; it means “Cup-of-tea.” He is widely celebrated as one of the four great masters of the genre, along with Bash?, Buson and Shiki.
 
He lost his mother when he was three, and the subsequent passage through an adoring Grandmother (who died when he was a young teen) to a wicked stepmother colored his formative years.
 
The Stepmother exiled him to old Edo, and eventually there was a bitter legal battle over his father’s inheritance. He married three times, with many issues that wound up in the courts, and despite all the personal tumult, his work reflects an innocence that is quite appealing.
 
Issa’s poem this morning collided with ice and reality.. I have a connection in the litigation community out West, and it is his considered opinion that the recovery is fluttering, at least in his constituency. Companies have been pressed up against the wall, and searching for ways to cut overhead.
 
Employees were the first to go. Now they are scouring the cupboards for other savings. Some of those apparently are the corporate equivalent of going without health insurance- they are cutting their legal fees and walking naked to the law.
 
Maybe it is the combination of the early meeting in Fairfax and the note from my legal counsel, the distinguished firm of Dewey, Dickem and Thrush, LLC.
 
It is a pity you don’t get a decent course in these matters before the Process grabs you and throws you into the shredder. Ever a ten-minute training film would have been useful, but of well. You have to deal with what it is when it happens and deal with it on the fly.
 
I don’t pay as much attention to the notes as I used to. They are intended to convey confidence, I think, since they are printed on rich vanilla-colored paper and are actually just statements of the amount left in my account with them from the last battle with the ex.
 
It is a modest balance, inconsequential, really. Certainly in comparison with the hefty wedge that they billed to my credit card as they filled up to the minimum to ensure their future vigilance on my behalf.
 
DDT has, of late, taken to sending a credit card voucher with the statement, which I assume means that they want me to fill up the account again against the contingency of future legal actions. They must have their backs against the wall like everyone else.
 
Since the only time I have spent in a courtroom as an adult is in the surreal realm of marital relations, that strikes me as sort of ominous. I wonder if they know something I don’t?
 
I know a “round three” is looming out there when my “circumstances change,” as the ambiguous words in the divorce decree go, and I do intend to seize back the remaining half of my Navy pension at some point in the not too distant future.
 
I had really been counting on that, something career military people do several times a day as a mantra to deal with the daily aggravation.
 
“It all counts on 20,” goes the old mantra.
 
At least until it doesn’t.
 
Shoot, I just looked at the little time icon on the screen. I have to be at a meeting in Fairfax in 50 minutes. I need to unfreeze myself from here and get it in gear. If Issa could do it, I can.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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