This Dewdrop Life
You and I squint together through a micro-lens. We examine the dewdrop on a blade of grass, we fumble for the thought that slipped away when the phone rang. We are the flea on a knuckle, thinking of mountains. I seek to mine meaning from the beauty and terror of the fleeting, everyday experience to gain an understanding of our ever-widening world and my place in it.
Dewdrop, let me cleanse
in your brief
sweet waters...
These dark hands of life
— Matsuo Basho
I chose “This Dewdrop Life” as the title for my blog because of the profound effect that the Basho haiku written above has had on me. I first read the poem in a most unlikely place of cows, corn, and order. I grew up in northwest Iowa, 20 miles from Minnesota and 90 miles from South Dakota. My town was supported by farms, farm industry, and farmers. We were townies and the health of our retail business relied on the wealth of the farmers. The wealth of the farmers relied a lot upon the weather and their preparedness for it. We all held our breath when the rainclouds were particularly stingy. An early freeze could mean disaster. The threat of tornados was real, and everyone knew there was nothing but devastation in those winds. Even townies liked me worked on farms in the summer. That is to say that I was raised in a town populated with hard-working, plain-spoken midwesterners before MTV or cable or anything cool came to town. There was nothing to buy at the K-Mart or the Sernett’s, and new music was hard to get. Hog reports on KICD-FM droned through breakfast as we bundled up to walk to school. We were tied to the seasons and the land that shaped us in its likeness - a flat terrain whose expansive vista left small chance for surprises.
And yet, there it was. It was beautiful, I had never seen anything like it. Mom and I were at the “cheap” grocery - the not-as-nice one on the north end of town with soft carrots and spotty onions and generic brand bread. We were standing in the checkout line, me eyeing the Doublemint gum and Marathon bars when I saw it among the impulse buys and candy offerings. It was tucked in a display of notepads. They were 5x7 and sported decorative stiff covers with a glue and paper binding at the top. You could tear each page out without the standard messy metal ring binding shredding the top of each sheet. But it wasn’t the binding that caught my eye - it was the photo on the cover. All the other notebooks had pictures of cats or flowers and sayings like, “Hang in There, Baby!” and, “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” Except one. The most beautiful one. It was a deep green-blue extreme close-up photo of a blade of grass and a single dewdrop clinging to its tip and overlaid with the words of haiku master, Matsuo Basho. I read it over and over…” cleanse me…dark hands of life…dewdrop…brief, sweet waters…” Dark hands of Life! I had to have it, I had to take it home and think on these words, this picture. I asked Mom and she said yes. I may have been crying or begging, or both. I waited until I got back to my room to remove the plastic wrap. I opened up the cover of the notepad, expecting to see wide-ruled lined paper inside, but instead, it was a faintly screened image of the cover in color with the words of the poem at the bottom OF EVERY PAGE. I thought I might faint I loved it so much. I spent the afternoon in my bean bag chair watching my fish circle their tank and thinking about the “dark hands of life” and the joy and relief of cleansing in brief, sweet water. Did a dewdrop taste sweet? Or did the poet mean something else? I was consumed with those few words and the photo. No one had ever spoken such phrases to me. I fell in love with poetry right then.
I had that notepad for years. I wrote letters to my Grandparents on that paper - I wonder what they thought of this weird kid that spent too much time in her room. I saved one sheet for the longest time - I’m extremely sentimental and have been known to keep tokens and mementos of important relationships. I finally lost (or sent as a letter?) the last sheet of the notebook. But my relationship with the poem, the dewdrop image, and that moment of clarity lives. It was the first recognition of “other;” of great writing, of the acknowledgment of not being alone. It awakened in me a thirst to know more, to look more deeply. That notepad was meant for me and I wish I still had it. I wonder if anyone saved a letter from little me written on that sacred, magical paper.
So, here I am, still puzzling it out. Adding my voice to the gumbo pot of humanity who has been pounding out words on hearts like corn on stone to make something nourishing. May you find something nourishing, here.
/em
Post Script
The phrase “this drewdrop life” is taken from a haiku written by Isso, the haiku master who lived long after Basho. Isso was referencing Basho’s dewdrop haiku when he wrote this verse on the anniversary of the death of his first child. He says it is a brief, sweet life and we shouldn’t cling too tightly to things that pass (all things pass)…and yet…and yet.
This dewdrop world --
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet . . .
—Kobayashi Isso
Stop. Motion. | The Fall 2020
On a hot afternoon, deep in the dog days of waning summer, I was walking to my friends’ house after my last class of the day, as I often did. I was cruising – walking fast with my book bag over my shoulder, heavy and off-center. In truth, my book bag was an over-grown, white plastic purse with twisted fake rope straps and a dirty, shapeless bottom, slung over my left shoulder like a lumpy potato sack, but it worked. In my right hand was a beloved kiwi-strawberry Snapple.
I have always walked quickly. I like the feeling of extending my legs long to cover serious ground in a hurry. It seems I’ve always been in a hurry – for what, to where I’m not sure. Chin out, eyes flashing, running ever on to some goal, driven to it. Eyes forward, I never saw the crumbling sidewalk ahead of me. Jutting up as tectonic plates thrust skyward from old roots pushing the limits of the ground and challenging the concrete, the sidewalk heaped in jagged peaks near the corner. I hit the rubble pile at full speed, no brakes. I went airborne and landed, tumbling, into the street.
There is a moment of clarity, frightening wakefulness when we fall. Even now, my sense memory takes me there. My eyes open to the sensation of hot water pouring all over inside my skin, a rush of adrenaline. I recognize my cheek is pressed against nubby, hot asphalt. I can smell and see everything all at once – oil, dirt, rubber, garbage, my own sweat. I sit up and feel dizzy, breathless, hot, like motion sickness. Now I see where I am – sitting in the street by the concrete curb. I look and realize what has happened – the obvious pointed cliffs of the broken sidewalk mock me. I feel an inside-to-outside creeping awareness. I wonder if anyone saw me and I feel embarrassment, a self-conscious flood of pity and shame. The rush of emotion ushers in the pain. I look at myself and I see my knee is bleeding, bits of crumbly asphalt stuck to it. I didn’t realize that the Snapple bottle in my hand broke my fall and shattered on the concrete. The sticky pink lemonade is spreading in the street and I’m sitting in a pool of it. There is blood. I turn my hand over and I see bits of glass sticking out of the fleshy part of my hand. I slowly pick out the glass, and with great effort, I move to stand. I feel wobbly and unsure of everything. My hip hurts. My butt is wet. I pick up my bag which has gone wandering a few feet away from the accident. I leave the broken glass and the mess and even though I don’t want to, I have a necessary cry as I limp along to my friends’ house where I find Band-Aids and sympathetic ears. Eventually, we laugh.
2020 was the ragged sidewalk. We were the self-obsessed student cruising along at top speed, engrossed in ourselves, and feeling in control. We forgot about the tangled roots underground that sprout when we least expect them. We forgot that control is an illusion. We forgot to slow down and notice where we are. We have experienced a collective brutal fall, all of us, together. We are still reeling and picking the shards from our palms. Go ahead, have the necessary cry, but get up. Keep moving. Go find your friends and tell them you love them. We will walk again. We will laugh again. But, we won’t soon forget how it feels to fall so hard and how dangerous it is to not pay attention to where we’re going.
em:me
[This is an excerpt from my collection of memoiristic essays tentatively entitled, “Geography of the Heart."]
Photo by Erin J. McGrane c2020