Do I Contradict Myself?

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman

In a previous post, I ask the question, "Who Am I?"

I may also ask, "What kind of writer am I?"   

Natalie Goldberg, in Writing Down the Bones warns us about thinking that our words are "permanent and solid and stamp us forever."  Just as we must embrace change and duality in ourselves as humans, we must accept change and duality in ourselves as writers.  We are not the words we write; we cannot let them freeze us.  Goldberg reveals:

The ability to put something down--to tell how you feel about an old husband, an old shoe, or the memory of a cheese sandwich on a gray morning in Miami--that moment you can finally align how you feel inside with the words you write; at that moment you are free because you are not fighting those things inside.  You have accepted them, become one with them.

Goldberg then tells something that happened to her:

I have a poem entitled "No Hope"--it's a long poem.  I always think of it as joyous because in my ability to write of desperation and emptiness I felt alive again and unafraid.  However, when I read it, people comment, "How sad."  I try to explain, but no one listens.

 Goldberg  reminds us:  The power is always in the act of writing.  Come back to that again and again and again.  Don't get caught in the admiration for your poems [or anything that you write].  ...we constantly need new insights, visions.  We don't exist in any solid form.  There is no permanent truth you can corner in a poem that will satisfy you forever.  Don't identify too strongly with your work.  Stay fluid behind those black-and-white words.  They are not you.  They were a great moment going through you.  A moment you were awake enough to write down and capture.

We all, as Whitman professed, contain multitudes.  We strive for inner unity and for the authentic "I"; yet, to settle on one way of being is to destroy ourselves.   We should be in a constant state of becoming, as human beings, as writers. 

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.
Walt Whitman