An Autumn Haibun
The characters in this piece are Typical Figures, and are not portrayals of individuals. Any parallels between their views and those of actual people are all in the mind.
Memberly Compact, the faithful old BHS statistician, stepped on his cottage doorstep and leant to empty the pot. As he straightened to sniff in the pale Autumn sunshine, the latch on the back gate clicked, a Texas-size figure came up the path, and he was scooped along his flagged passageway by Tempus Mondragon, the Cyclonic Activator.
last drops from the bucket of tea-leaves fall unheard
“I want you to certify my analysis of the latest 2001 members’ list,” TM exclaimed. “My secretary is very willing, but...”
“I’ll check if the figures add up correctly, if that’s what you mean,” offered MC.
“What should we do without you! The implications of this are going to transform our one whole great wide world of haiku, as it heads for the 25th Century. Look!”
MC held the sheet up by the window for a quick glance. Then he took the green chenille cover off the table in the middle, placed the paper beside his Members Lists, and pumped up the paraffin lamp before hanging it from a hook in the ceiling. “Could you explain?”
the oil is getting low - his thoughts are of autumn sleep
“The rows for 1966 and 2001 are the membership for those years, except for covert characters of no address. 1966+ is what 1966 would have been if the same as 2001...”
“I understand you,” said MC, with cautionary emphasis, “but who knows how the 1966 numbers would have been distributed had their total been some 50% higher? To be precise, times 1.567, I believe,” he added modestly.
“We are making a comparison between the years; one could say, between two epochs in the history of the Society. In the regions, we define London as inside the M25. The Home Counties are those that actually go into London, plus E. Sussex in the south, and some Berks, Bucks and Beds in the north. South Central is W. Sussex, Hampshire, a few Berks, and the hind parts of Dorset & Wilts. Look, here’s the map: you can see it all for yourself. The actual boundaries don’t matter - as long as they don’t change from year to year.”
They do, thought MC; but the point wasn’t worth arguing.
“Now we can see where we’re strong, where we need to put in the action teams, the dangers, opportunities...”
“I can see in this account little except that there has been a considerable rise in membership over ‘66; actually, even over last year. I’m surprised only that it took so long to appear, given the efforts of all concerned.”
“A mere 50% is nothing,” said TM boldly. “We have before us the initial matrix which will generate an expansion inconceivable to those paltry spirits who are afraid of change. Of course, these figures are inadequate for our purposes: I shall send them to ‘The Brief. But can’t you see the possibilities?”
“For what?” said MC, stifling a yawn.
a new mattress made up on the attic floor to catch the moonlight
“I see I must start at the beginning. Look, take the lady member from Cheshire. Cheshire is North for our purposes, but it appears to be mainly Home Counties. So how does the Cheshire Cat see herself? Northern Grit, or Mock Tudor? We don’t know. That’s why the Members List is so useless. It should tell people about each other, but it doesn’t.”
the host has set out his tables but no-one is come to the feast
“Even with 300,” TM went on,” we’re very thin on the ground: you can’t dash from Dumfries to Dingwall for a daisan, or go ginking from Gloucester to Goole and back again in an afternoon. However, if I say to you that in five years’ time, we’ll all be wired up...”
at the New Year’s party everyone thinks they’ll live for ever
“Make it twenty-five. And still not everyone: some think others are a distraction, and for some, c’est faut d’argent.”
“OK, OK; but all reasonable people.”
“OK, OK: so we’re all sitting round a network. What now?”
why is the aged thrush so cheerful in the snow?
“Well, we don’t all want to be sending each other 300+ e-mails, do we? We want to be sending our messages, our haiku, to those we know are really going to appreciate them. So we need a picture of each other. A kind of fingerprint.”
“Sounds criminal. Couldn’t you call it something else?”
“Right on! A full-fronted profile. Everyone posts their profile on the net, and then can link up with birds of the feather at a touch of a key.”
“Doesn’t one need a dendrogram?”
“Pruff! They’re visual aids for computer illiterates. Just find out which button to press.”
“Whoa there - take me with you. How do you fix all this?”
out for a ride he’s soon tired holding back the spring colt
“Of course, it will need more co-operation than we’ve been getting from some of our members. The simplest way is for everyone to fill in a questionnaire when they renew their subscription. There would be a battery of statements, maybe a hundred, and you’d show how far you agreed with each by a mark out of 10. For example, look at this...”
“And then you add up the marks?”
“Of course not. The total is meaningless - except for spotting deviants, who are not really hai-coo anyway. You find degrees of compatibility in the answers to all or any group of statements. So each person can have on screen a personal list of possible contacts.”
“Aren’t some of our statements ambiguous?” said Memberly.
clouds on the mountain the peak isn’t there
“And also,” he continued, “is what people say about themselves necessarily true? Not that I think anyone would tell deliberate lies.”
suspending disbelief as the teller of tales rolls them over
“That is a very fine point: we need to hone our sensitivities,” said Tempus.
“Once the first networks are set up - and you remember one person may be a member of many networks - people can, so to speak, let their hair down. Then everyone answers another questionnaire, giving the answers they think X, let’s say, would give. Marks for each question are averaged, and we have the picture of how X appears to the haiku world.”
“But not his wife?”
“It could be, Memberly, it could be. The picture is virtual, to interface with his own self-image, leading to convergence and enlightenment.”
a rough shelter from the rain that’s life at its best
“I’d rather you didn’t smoke, Tempus,” said MC, as TM brought out his cigar case. “Let me light an incense stick, and I’ll open the window. Tea, ginger beer, or elderberry wine?”
hot summer night eating jellied eels the breeze brings fragrance
Memberly resumed: “You have me confused. There seems no place in your scheme for any overall direction, or national initiatives. Meantime it appears both the Regional Groups and the envisaged networks are going on at once in your head, with nothing to boost either of them except the occasional accretions we have now. And where is the creative individual? To say nothing of Prima Donnas - of both sexes. I’m not at all convinced that intimate circles are cosy collectivities.”
Tempus shrugged. “I’m sure we have one or two psychologists among us who can sort all that out. The point is that the finely attuned group is the power cell of the Society. Look at the figures. Members come in clusters, which grow wherever there are a few activists.”
nearly into October all through town and I can’t find a soul
“I don’t altogether agree. You come across haikers in surprising places, like mushrooms. Tell me Tempus, do these profiles have any other uses?”
“Stacks! Choice of next President, deciding when the committee needs re-electing, competition judges, which mag to send to, chasing scurrilous verses, dating anonymous authors, sorting out desk haikuists - and we’ve a special questionnaire for those of you who are renga freaks.”
the winter sky is shaken and broken up by a storm from the north
“Now Tempus: put your hand on your heart. Will this help me write my next haiku?”
“Bound to. More in, more out.”
“Garbage.”
“Interaction creates dynamism.”
“Fugue.”
“Knowledge is power.”
“But power isn’t knowledge.”
“Memberly, I wouldn’t say it to you, but there are some right sticks-in-the-mud about.”
“Yet no wrong ones, I hope. Well, thank you for letting me see your figures, Tempus. I see the wind is getting up. Perhaps you’d best be off before it rains.”
Memberly pressed an umbrella on his departing guest, and took a last look at the darkening morning.
the cherry blossoms fall I reach for my old robe and become a priest again
As he closed his window, he watched Tempus go down the road. The rain was falling, but Tempus was jabbing his umbrella, as if to convince an opponent.
the noble heron
stalks on the water
without his feet
NOTE
The haibun verses are versions from ‘The Tub of Ashes’, a renga by Boncho, Bashō, Yasui & Kyor-al. More accurate translations are in Earl Miner - Japanese Linked Verse (Princeton); and Bill Wyatt - Renga from ‘The Monkey’s Raincoat’ (Hub Editions)
Page(s) 47-51
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