got diverted, somehow, to my haiku, which is now at 720 and awaiting a 2013 edition, which would be better, i hope, and more complete. in fact i had a final printing, 20 copies of the 2012, brought it home, and now going through it (too late) with a fine-tooth comb. it's missing a heading for the state of maine - a disaster. who knows what else is amiss. i vow to make the next one cleaner. it is supposed to be all 5-7-5, but it's not: i'm trying to make that cleaner too. lots of it needs to be cleaner. i'm a little critical, now that i actually read it.

a little guy fell and hurt himself, on the school trip, at the end of the year. doctor's appointments, etc., just as i was leaving for kerrville. more later; i'll keep you filled in. i'm a little nervous about kerrville, but it will be good for me. the music is bottling up inside...scheduled to leave tomorrow, FR, and get to kerrville maybe about midnight. scheduled to play on saturday at noon; this will be at a place called the kerr-reckard store. i don't know much about the place - i'll have to scout out the grounds a little.

so i'm taking all these poetry books, and as i sit here trying to make a better version, a 2013, i kind of want to just give away all the 2012s. it even irritates me to read the darn thing, though it isn't bad, if you step back a little. i have several problems though. one is that 40 years of memories come between the actual trip and now; i don't mind including stuff i've learned in the time between, but to some degree i'd like to keep it true to the seventies themselves, and when i actually traveled. so i have to weed out a few of the intervening ones, ones that were written about the intervening time. it's almost like, each one has a time frame, as well as a season and a place.

then, in the big picture, i'm really not too slick about the kigo words, which are season clues. you'd think i'd have better ones besides "summer," "winter" etc. it's almost that, looking back over years of making haiku (i seem to write about a hundred a year), i stumble over some dry eras, times when they really weren't that good. i might weed some out, and then, i might weed some every year. it seems one way would be to make them evolve, make them get better.

the process starts with making sure they are all a true 5-7-5, that kigo are true, that our cultural measurement (spring mar. 21-june 21, etc.) doesn't throw me off; that they are relatively balanced, even if my experience in that state wasn't...2013 will be cleaner, i tell you, i'll make sure of that, if i do nothing else.