Since starting this weblog, I have received many comments and e-mails, from you; my mentors, comrades, friends, readers and subscribers. You have provided me with poems, haiku, and other forms of artistic self-expression. I thought it would be interesting to create a forum where your submissions can be shared. The result is this continuing article whereby YOU, the reader, can submit your artistic and personal expressions. Simply follow the instructions set forth below. You may continue to do so at anytime throughout 2011.
So as to facilitate contemporaneous review of your submissions throughout the year, I will include a notice of all new submissions with each new article I subsequently post.
To inaugurate this page, I would like to post the following artistic expressions that were recently sent to me.
From Shihan Thomas DeFelice, Ku-Dan (9th Degree Black Belt), Menkyo Kaiden, Goshin-Do Karate-Do:
On New Year’s Day
I long to meet my parents
As they were before my birth.
From Sensei G.B., Yon-Dan (4th Degree Black Belt), Goshin-Do Karate-Do (attributed to Kobayashi):
A New Year –
until the rain-catching stone is dented.
Submitted by C.G., A friend, via Facebook (attributed to: Lao Tzu):
“The Way which can be spoken is not the Eternal Way”
The Kanji is brushed ink on paper enhanced with photoshop software to add the effects shown.
To the above, I would add the following, which is a personal favorite (by Ariwara No Narihira, circa: 9th century):
I have always known that, at last, I would
Take this road, but yesterday, I did not know that it would be today.
In closing, I eagerly await your submissions to this article.
Sensei John Szmitkowski, Soke, Jiriki Kata-Do
PLEASE SUBMIT your poem, haiku, or other artistic expression as follows:
You may send me your submission either: 1) in the form of a comment by clicking the “comment” icon at the very end of this page (after the “Tags”) or 2) through FaceBook. To submit via Facebook, please follow the instructions on the “Video & Media” page of my fly fishing weblog. Here is a convenient link: http://flyfishingdojo.wordpress.com/video-media/
If you have any questions as to the FaceBook process, please ask such question as a “comment” by clicking the comment icon at the bottom of this post (after the “Tags”).
Kata-RX For wellness 
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