Yes the Haikus came first, then the music from an ai app. I asked for a tune that would fit the Haiku style and the mood of the six verses as a whole. I was also reminded me of the preschool song we used to sing “When I’m on my journey there is no one there but me .. etc.” 

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 10, 2025, at 4:52 AM, James Wiegel via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

In the land of the lonely — thanks for the song, Milan, are the verses really haiku?  Wow.

your song addressed my life.  All your songs do:  putting verse out there, not just “watching all the world go by” and this one reminded me of the final solitude I am dancing around.  (Judy and I are both updating our living trust and hosting 2 grandkids — so full of life and energy and clearly living in a different, if not other world.

Also, and only indirectly related, I had come across that statement from Auden and wanted somehow to pass it on.  The two got conflated, vs. dealing with the impact of each on its own.

Thanks, again, and kudos to your writing group.
Jim Wiegel

“…the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come and let us talk“. 

The Sunflowers. Mary Oliver


On Sep 8, 2025, at 9:34 AM, Milan Hamilton via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

Yes Nancy, I wasn’t sure of my response would be to what Jim responded with, but I have even found in these past few years that occurring in a “strange bedfellowhood group,” my writing group has a black former teacher and a Mexican American, a Brit, a woman who grew up in a village in Germany whose mother was killed in her house she was building by American bombers on the last days of the war, all of the former who are sympathetic if not enthusiastic with my political persuasions. Several Christians evangelicals, a couple of Seventh Day Adventists, and at least two MAGA Republicans, one who thinks Trump is the Messiah (my interpretation). The point of my lengthy context is that when the members of this group are writing their stories and talking about their lives instead of their beliefs, on a number of our two hour sharing sessions, what Jim and you are referring to seems to be present in the room. Milan

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 8, 2025, at 12:03 AM, Nancy Lanphear via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:


Thanks Jim, for sharing this piece by W H Auden. I’ve  had a similar experience again and again with various configurations here in my community. Living in community and constantly meeting in groups or individuals “on the path” ….. it reminds me how fortunate I am to have a home in which to practice the experience of  “fellow hood” over and over again. 
Sent with love. ❤️ 
Nancy

On Sep 7, 2025, at 9:27 PM, James Wiegel via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:



Thanks, Milan.  An abrupt ending.

I ran across this from W. H. Auden last week.  I think it is somehow related . . .

What we used to mean by fellowhood


"One fine summer night in June 1933 l was sitting on a lawn after dinner with three colleagues, two women and one man. We liked each other well enough but we were certainly not intimate friends, nor had any one of us a sexual interest in another. Incidentally, we had not drunk any alcohol. We were talking casually about everyday matters when, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a power which, though I consented to it, was irresistible and certainly not mine. For the first time in my life I knew exactly — because, thanks to the power, I was doing it - what it means to love one's neighbor as oneself. I was also certain, though the conversation continued to be perfectly ordinary, that my three colleagues were having the same experience. (In the case of one of them, I was later able to confirm this.) My personal feelings towards them were unchanged - they were still colleagues, not intimate friends — but I felt their existence as themselves to be of infinite value and rejoiced in it.

I recalled with shame the many occasions on which I had been spiteful, snobbish, selfish, but the immediate joy was greater than the shame, for 1 knew that, so long as I was possessed by this spirit, it would be literally impossible for me deliberately to injure another human being. I also knew that the power would, of course, be withdrawn sooner or later and that, when it did, my greed and self-regard would return. The experience lasted at its full intensity for about two hours when we said good-night to each other and went to bed. When I awoke the next morning, it was still present, though weaker, and it did not vanish completely for two days or so. The memory of the experience has not prevented me from making use of others, grossly and often, but it has made it much more difficult for me to deceive myself about what I am up to when I do. And among the various factors which several years later brought me back to the Christian faith in which I had been brought up, the memory of this experience and asking myself what it could mean was one of the most crucial, though, at the time it occurred, I thought I had done with Christianity for good."

~ W. H. Auden, from his Introduction to

'The Protestant Mystics',

", edited by

Anne Freemantle

Jim Wiegel

“We are all time travelers journeying into the future. But let us make that future a place we want to visit. “       Stephen Hawking


On Sep 6, 2025, at 5:37 PM, Milan Hamilton via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:


My writing group, the Joslyn Joy Writers ( a bunch of seniors who meet weekly to share what they are writing. They thought this one was worthy so I am putting it out there. The assignment for the week was to write about the "Land of the Lonesome" but I took a liberty and wrote six "Haikus in the Land of the Lonely" and then put it to a simple tune and added my voice. We have to continue in poetry and song what we can't say any other way these days.


Mellow Milan Hamilton
80 North Center Street
Redlands, CA 92373
Phone: (909) 943-1667
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