Questions from Dave, the Peace-Loving Buddhist

My book cover photo

People who journal online have been interviewing each other.  I have stepped in—below are the rules: 

 

Leave me a comment saying "interview me." The first five to leave a comment requesting to be participants will be interviewed. I will respond by asking you five questions. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some) Fun and easy right?

 

These questions were posed by Dave, our peace-loving Buddhist.

 

1.  You have an obvious love for the power of myths. Do you see a negative or dark side to myths? Are there any dangers?  If so, could you give us an example?

 

I see a couple of ways I could interpret your question.  There is a dark side to myths—many myths are specifically about darkness, chaos, destruction, apocalypse.  I think the myths teach us that our lives are a combination of darkness and light, creation and destruction.

 

But I think perhaps you are asking if there is a dark side to believing in myths, to letting them guide us in our lives.  And, yes, there is, absolutely.  If you  give myths literal interpretations and use them as a way of saying that you are “right” and others are “wrong,” then that is very dangerous.  We see the side-effects of that kind of thinking right now in many places of  the world.  I think all myths are fluid.  They are like water and take on the shape of the vessel (person) they enter.

 

2.  As your trip down the Ohio river approaches, what do you anticipate to be the most difficult aspect of the trip? What do you anticipate will be the most enjoyable.

 

Without a doubt, the most difficult aspect will be the physical ordeal of living, eating, sleeping, and traveling on a boat.  Of dealing with the rain and the sun.  And the heat.  Mostly, I think a lot about not having access to my great big bathtub.  There aren’t many things I like better than sinking into a tub of hot, steamy water and soaking for hours while reading or writing. 

 

The most enjoyable aspect will be the feeling that I own my own time.

 

3.  You mention in your journal that you've never written non-fiction before. And when we think about it most writers either write non-fiction or fiction but seldom both. Stephen King, for instance, has dozens and dozens of fiction works published but only one or two works of non-fiction. Why do you think there is such a divide? Why is it so difficult for authors to bounce back and forth between the two?

 

I’ve thought a lot about this topic.  I can only answer for myself (Stephen King will have to answer on his own.).  I suspect that in order to write really good non-fiction (especially travel narrative), you need to be good at observation and description.  I’m not good at either.  That is a fact.  My writing is mainly metaphorical.  I’m very “dreamy” in my orientation to the world; I live deep inside my imagination.  Sensory input, sensory memory doesn’t become a strong part of my awareness unless it connects to something metaphorical.  For instance, I once went on a hike with my husband, Allen and our youngest son, Brian.  I became very tired and hot and sat on a large rock, concentrating on the pain I was having in my legs and in one hip.  Then I noticed the rock was covered in tiny Sedum.  I thought about how the Sedum was thriving on very little nourishment, and that idea filled me courage.  The connection between the Sedum and courage turned on my sensory awareness, somehow: I remember precisely how the Sedum looked, felt—how soft it was, how cool.  I remember  little  else about that day.  

 

Also, you see in my response to Robin’s question (Midlife Matters) about my upcoming river journey that I’m more interested in what the river means than in the physical aspects of the river or the technical aspects of the journey. 

 

I think I need to remember what my writing strengths are and to realize that my travel narrative is going to be different than most others I have read.  If I have trouble describing the water or the sunset, then so be it—I will just have to compensate in other ways. 

 

The other problem for me regarding non-fiction is that I’m not used to writing without being behind the mask.  Writing without it makes me feel vulnerable.  And  sometimes my non-fiction writing gets stiff and mechanical because I’m afraid of revealing too much about myself.

 

4.  Writing can be difficult because in a sense it's never finished. We can always go back and rewrite and improve upon what we've done. How do you determine when enough is enough and your baby is ready to share with the world? 

 

You never know, you just stop and hope what you have is convincing and meaningful.  You stop oftentimes because something else moves into your imagination to take its place. In order to feel a sense of completion, you send it to an editor somewhere and hope the work speaks to him or her. I believe it’s the nature of the Artist to never be satisfied with his or her work.  As with life, you simply move on.  I just saw in the April  15, 2005 Writer’s Almanac something about Leonardo Da Vinci: 

 

Leonardo's notebooks are full of one sentence, repeated again and again, and scholars believe he wrote it whenever he was testing out a newly cut pen. That sentence was, "Tell me, tell me if anything got finished."

 

5.  If you were given the chance to sit down and pick the brain of a famous writer alive or dead, who would it be? What kinds of questions would you ask? 

 

I think I’d like to ask Richard Brautigan (Trout Fishing In  America, Revenge of the Lawn, The Tokyo-Montana Express and other works) some questions, particularly regarding his childhood and how it influenced his writing.  A friend of mine in art school introduced me to Brautigan in the mid-eighties.  His work is quirky, and the thing that has always appealed to me about it is the way he raises everyday objects to the level of the sacred. For instance,in a story called “The Kool-Aid Wino,” he describes a water spigot as thrusting out of the  ground like the finger of a saint.  I’ve never been able to forget that image.  

 

Brautigan referred often to death in his writings (he committed suicide in 1984), and I would ask him why: I would ask him if he thought his unhappy childhood had caused him to think a lot about death.

Richard Brautigan

Thanks, Dave.  Those were fantastic questions.  They helped me to put into words a lot of what I've been thinking about lately.