What the Body Loves

I've been fascinated by geese since I moved to Ohio in 1987 and first saw Canada Geese.  I liked their regal bearing, their large size.  I've since run across the goose as an archetype or symbol in a lot of literature.  The goose that laid the golden egg is a story element that originated with the cosmic or world egg, which separated to become the earth, sun, and moon. 

The image of the goose is primordial to me; it is symbolic to me of the deepest aspect of the imagination. When I touch that place, I feel a sense of completeness.  

This poem by Mary Oliver describes how I often feel when I write.  It is a returning to my "animal self," that part of me that's wild, elemental.  Oliver says that to have a divine moment "You do not have to walk on your knees...repenting./You only have to let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves."

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting----
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

When you write, let your body love what it loves, and write that.

Fire in the Earth

Work/werk/n:  an oppor-

tunity for discovering

and shaping;

the place

where the

self meets

the world

--From David Whyte's book Crossing the Unknown Sea:  Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity.

The quote above, as well as the following poem, written by Pablo Neruda, describe what writing means to me and what it feels like when the writing is going well.  The poem is translated by David Whyte and is in his book of poems, Fire In The Earth.  Earth is a metaphor for our bodies; the fire is the soul, the center, the self.  It is where our creativity and imagination originate.

LA POESIA

...And something ignited in my soul,

fever or unremembered wings,

and I went my own way,

deciphering

that burning fire

and I wrote the first bare line,

bare, without substance, pure

foolishness,

pure wisdom

of one who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open.

To me, this is what the early stages of writing feel like.  That initial spark of something we know or remember, the impetus to get it down, the first effort which is without form, foolish even.  But pushing through that first stage, you reach a moment of transcendence, of connection.  A moment when the heavens open and we feel connected to something greater than ourselves.

Strangers

"The stranger functions as an unexpected messenger who can embody or mirror what is extraordinary within us, what is possible but yet unlived." 

--Mark Nepo

"We ought to concentrate on how the encounter [with the stranger] ... can be as much a catalyst for creativity as it is a potential trigger for anxiety."

--Elaine A. Jahner

"When people await a cat, the stranger manifests himself as a lion."

--Nouk Bassomb

Stranger, from the Old French, Estrange, meaning "extraordinary."

These journals (or blogs) admit strangers into sometimes intimate territory.  So I've been thinking about the stranger, who happens to be an archetypal character in literature.  The stranger has potential to destroy, but also the potential to build and transform.  Who will we let into our lives, and what difference will the stranger make? 

William Stafford once wrote in the poem, "Ask Me" --

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made.  Ask me whether

what I have done is my life.  Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt:  ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

Helen Dooling Draper also addresses this notion of the archetypal stranger in her essay, "In the Doorway."  She writes of the stranger poised in the doorway of our life, each of us with the choice of whether or not to let the stranger in:

"In this moment between heartbeats, the door is neither fully open nor closed; the choice between fearful rejection or whole-hearted welcome has yet to be made."

Draper also asks:  "When we encounter a stranger, we wonder:  Is this a friend or foe?  Is it safe to believe the words of someone unknown?  Shall we throw the gates open and welcome--or slam them shut in dismissal?"

She says, "Perhaps the true role of the stranger is to call us to a meeting at the border--the place between ourselves and ... the place where we might discover a kind of knowing that relates not only to place but also to time." 

Together, Draper says, "we listen to others who guide our steps--scholars, seers, poets, teachers--and we gain insights through myth, story, and traditional wisdom."

It seems to me that is what the Internet has opened up for us all.

 

 

The Other Thing

 

 

 

"Right.  Money isn't everything--what's the other thing again?"

A simple way of looking at story writing:  You are trying to remind your readers about "the other thing."

Cartoon credit:  The New Yorker, Sept. 27, 2004

April Fool

This is a drawing I did in a sketchbook on 1 April 1981.  At the time I was an undergraduate, in my mid-twenties, and had not yet discovered writing as my ultimate source of expression.  I was double-majoring in Art and English.

The drawing, a self-portrait, is called "April Fool."  I felt like a fool and made myself look like one because I had no idea where I was going.  I was married with two children, and I was coming to an awareness that I would never be the artist I had hoped to be.  I just wasn't good enough.  I loved my literature classes, but what could I do with that to make a living?

The hands definitely express the idea that I was feeling trapped, pressed down by expectations (real and some possibly imagined). 

White on White

This poem by Elizabeth Spires is from this week's New Yorker.  I am greatly taken with it. 

The first time I read it, I didn't even realize it is the "nightgown" that is speaking--the speaker felt so utterly human.  The second reading, when I realized the speaker is literally a nightgown, deepened the meaning, and I was in awe of how the personification of a simple piece of clothing yielded such a profound statement about ambivalence. 

The nightgown, which has no head or heart, sees a moment of transcendence so many of us seek (a release from the eternal struggle between head and heart)--a moment that surpasses a need for words, a "white world written on with white writing."

 

NIGHTGOWN

by Elizabeth Spires

To be inhabited.

To float from room

to room raving, waving my arms.

To be tossed by unfamiliar dreams,

and then to lie limp and slack on the bed.

To be folded, without a thought,

and put away in a dark drawer.

Or to hang in a closet, shapeless as a sack,

knowing the terror of form dissolving into formlessness.

         

          Someone is inside me.

          Someone is continually dreaming

          dreams not my own

          so that I am pulled this way and that!

 

I have always been attracted to the moon.

To a place where I shiver but do not freeze.

And although I, unlike you, must make do

without a head or heart, I can imagine a future

you cannot:  where, filled with a wild winter-emptiness,

I fly over a streaming patchwork countryside

to see what has so far eluded me:

the white world written on with white writing!

Family

This is a photograph I keep on the wall of my writing studio.  It is, I believe, the only photograph in existence of the entire family I grew up with.  Grandmother, Father, Mother, and two Brothers.  I'm the baby in the photograph.

It comes as a shock to me each time to realize that only two of the people in the photograph are still alive.  

I keep this photograph in plain sight because it causes me to reflect on life and loss, which is usually my favorite thing to think about while writing, because I think loss is what describes life best. 

I look at the people in the picture who seem to be having fun on a sunny day.  I wonder what each person was thinking about.  I wonder what their dreams were.  I wonder what kept them working, striving, and getting up again when they failed. 

I'll never know the answers, but the questions are good ones.

Shhhhhhh

Not long ago, I read an interview with a writer who recently published her second novel.  In the interview, she revealed that her second novel was actually her third novel.  The second novel she "lost" because she discussed it too much with family and friends.  She simply lost interest in writing down the story because she had already told it too many times. 

I could relate to her experience.  I find that when I'm working on a writing project, that the less I say about it to others the more likely I am to finish the project.  During the 6 years I spent working on my first novel, I didn't talk about it to ANYONE (no matter how much the person begged).  There's something about the power of your secret that creates pent up energy which is a nourishment for the imagination.  I found this poem by Rumi, one of my favorite poets, which describes the importance of the heart's secrets:

When your heart becomes the grave of your secret,

that desire of yours will be gained more quickly.

...anyone

who keeps secret his inmost thought

will soon attain the object of his desire.

When seeds are buried in the earth,

their inward secrets become the flourishing garden.

Of course there are times during your drafting when you may need and desire feedback.  But I've found that in the early, early stages, the secret is extremely important in maintaining my excitement for coming back to the project.

Writing Icons

From Religion and Ethics Newsweekly:

In the Orthodox Christian tradition, icons are said to be written, not painted. The Orthodox consider making icons more a form of prayer than art, and they believe the iconographer's hand is guided by God. We visited an iconographer, Maria Leontovitsch Manley, in her Bethesda, Maryland studio to learn more about the process, which can take days, often weeks, for just one icon. She also showed us how she decorates eggs for Orthodox Easter celebrations.

MARIA LEONTOVITSCH MANLEY (Iconographer): Before I start work, I like to say a prayer. And I usually go into a room where I have an icon corner.

It's very important to be at peace with yourself and with the world around you. Writing an icon is a form of prayer. Each brushstroke is like a form of meditation.

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I very much like this description of painting icons.  The Iconographer (painter) speaks of her work as a form of "writing."

In my own writing, I often use icons--Christ, Elvis, John and Bobby Kennedy--because they make me feel something deep and true about what it means to be alive.  How intriguing that the painter describes her process as a prayer, as a form of meditation.  That is often how I feel when I'm writing.

Of writing (painting) icons, it has been said:   "Like all religious images, an icon has as its purpose acting as a 'window to Heaven,' a portal through which one sees greater Truths than can be revealed by word alone."

This is how I would like my writing to be viewed, as a document through which the reader can see a greater truth.

Photo credit:  John Kennedy, 1960 by Garry Winogrand.  From a postcard sent to me by Erin B., a former student.

Article from Religion and Ethics Newsweekly

Quote about "greater Truths" from Apologia

Self-Portrait

  Two people with whom I've been corresponding about writing intersect here at this poem.  "V" introduced me to the poet David Whyte.  I looked him up on the Internet and found this poem, which I sent to "B," who is working on his first novel.

Photo:  The Ascent of Muhammad to Heaven on his steed Buraq, guided by Gabriel and escorted by angels.

 

Self-Portrait
From
Fire in the Earth
by David Whyte
Copyright © 1992 by David Whyte  

It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.

I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.

From
Fire in the Earth
by David Whyte
Copyright © 1992 by David Whyte

Thumbelina and the Imagination

Recently, I've been giving the fairytale "Thumbelina" another look.  Many people see the wee mite as the hero of the story, but I prefer to think of the mother of Thumbelina as the hero.  Thumbelina represents the mother's center, soul, imagination.  All writers are inventors and creators, so the story is relevant to both men and women.

There was once a woman (1A) who wished very much to have a little child, but she could not obtain her wish.  At last she went to a fairy (1B), and said, "I should so very much like to have a little child; can you tell me where I can find one?"

"Oh, that can be easily managed, " said the fairy.  "Here is a barleycorn (2A) of a different kind to those which grow in the farmer's fields, and which the chickens eat; put it into a flower-pot, and see what will happen."

"Thank you," said the woman, and she gave the fairy twelve (2B) shillings, which was the price of the barleycorn.  Then she went home and planted it, and immediately there grew a large handsome flower, something like a tulip in appearance, but with its leaves tightly closed as if it were still a bud (3).  "It is a beautiful flower," said the woman, and she kissed the red and golden-colored leaves, and while she did so the flower opened, and she could see that it was a real tulip.  Within the flower, upon the green velvet stamens (4), sat a very delicate and graceful little maiden (5).  She was scarcely half as long as a thumb, and they gave her the name of "Thumbelina," or Tiny, because she was so small.

---------------------------------------------------------------

(1A)  In another version, the woman is described as an "old widow."  I like the "old widow" version better because she represents middle age, the time when many people feel they have lost their creative energy.  Thumbelina would represent the rebirth of our imagination.  In the other version ("woman" version), the mother simply disappears and the hero becomes Thumbelina.  I'm more interested in the Jungian approach, although I may not be doing it just right:  the "old widow" is  the hero of the story, and each character is part of her psyche.

(1B)  In another version of the story, the fairy is instead a witch (crone).  I like the use of the witch (crone) better because she completes the trinity--virgin (the flower bud), mother (bud opens), and crone.  

(2A)   From The Symbolism of Bread.

Piero Camporesi among others has pointed to the sexual symbolism of bread. In his book The Magic Harvest Camporesi claims that, "Bread serves as an emblem of both male and female reproductive organs, and edible metaphor of the phallus and the vulva, both in the (feminine) ellipsoid loaves and in the numerous loaves of phallic form". Is this an extension of bread as life-giving symbol? The phrase "She's got a bun in the oven" is still used of a pregnant woman. Taking a loaf with Camporesi, semen could be wheat seed that has been transformed after much grinding of millstones/ thighs, mixing with various fluids, baking in the oven/womb into the foetus/loaf.

But what is it about bread that allows it to be symbolically life giving? After all, we don't need bread to live. Camporesi talks of bread as a symbol of "life in perpetual regeneration . . . of the continuity of existence". But I think he is missing something. Focusing only on baking and ingestion throws too narrow a light. I believe it is not bread per se that is carrying the meanings, but the whole cycle from planting to eating. In fact, not until the bread is eaten can the cycle be complete.

Let me draw a parallel. A traditional English folk song tells the tale of John Barleycorn. John is the barley plant, more particularly the barley seed. In the song men come into the field and cut down John Barleycorn, then beat him (threshing), grind him between two stones and bung him in a vat, effectively killing him. The punch line, though, is that John Barleycorn "lives to tell tale, for they pour him out of oaken vat and they call him nut brown ale". This is a story of resurrection, as of course are the stories of Christ and of Persephone.

I also found these references to barley or grain:  Fruitfulness, reaping, prosperity, reverence, purification, transformation, change, The Bread of Life, The Chalice of Plenty , The Ever-flowing Cup , the Groaning Board (Table of Plenty)

(2B)  Twelve represents a complete cycle, as in twelve months or twelve disciples.

(3)  As I said, the bud can be symbolic of virginity.  The virgin is the first stage of the triple goddess.  I also found that the tulip can represent "imagination and dreaminess."  The tulip is also a flower that blooms in the Spring.

(4)  Velvet stamens--sounds beautifully erotic.

(5)  The Anderson illustration shows her as a young maiden.  An illustration I found on the internet shows an infant inside the flower.  I like the Anderson illustration better.  

*Illustration credit:  Wayne Anderson

The Broken Cord

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell talked about myths in which humans came from the womb of the Earth.  Campbell said,

Often, in these stories, there is a great ladder or rope up which people climb.  The last people to want to get out are two great big fat heavy people.  They grab the rope, and snap!--it breaks.  So we are separated from our source.  In a sense, because of our minds we actually are separated, and the problem is to reunite that broken cord.

When I write, that's what I'm trying to do, reunite some broken cord, I think. 

Quote from The Power of Myth.

Our Cross

This semester I'm participating in the "common reading experience" (CRE) at my university.  For the CRE, a literary work is chosen, and all incoming freshmen read the work.  Students experience the work in one or more classes, classes where the instructors find some relevance in the work to what they want to accomplish.  This year, the book is The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

Reading O'Brien's book again--I have read it many times--I am struck by how often writers comment on the act of story-telling itself. 

So far in my reading, Tim O'Brien has said three important things about telling stories: 

1--Stories are eternal.

2--Stories are often an unburdening, a confession.

3--There needs to be a sense of urgency, a reason for telling the story beyond the confession.

First, O'Brien talks about being forty-three years old and having a need to tell the story of what happened to him long ago in Vietnam.  He writes: 

"Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a life time ago, and yet the remembering makes it now.  And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever."

He also comments about what makes a story eternal: 

"That's what stories are for.  Stories are for joining the past to the future.  Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are.  Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story." 

I like this idea, that stories join the past and the future.  I've named this entry "Our Cross" because O'Brien's novel has a main character named Jimmy Cross (J.C., the same initials as Christ, who died on the cross).  And a cross is symbolic of so many things, including time.  Past and future intersect, and that point of intersection is the present.  When we write our stories, we are at that point of intersection. 

My second point is about story-telling as a "confession."  The cross is also a symbol of a burden that must be born.  O'Brien writes of how his memories of Vietnam have burdened him too long.  He must write them down.  O'Brien writes: 

"There is one story I've never told before.  Not to anyone.  Not to my parents, not to my brother or sister, not even to my wife.  To go into it, I've always thought, would only cause embarrassment for all of us, a sudden need to be elsewhere, which is the natural response to a confession."

There we have it--the need to confess something.  O'Brien says that he has had to live with the story so long, "feeling the shame, trying to push it away," and he hopes that by telling his his story, he will be able to "relieve at least some of the pressure on my dreams."

The third point about story-telling is that there should be an urgent, pressing need.  (I mentioned this in an earlier entry in reference to Mircea Eliade).  Beyond the personal need to unburden himself, O'Brien also wishes to leave a document behind, a document of what it was like to fight in Vietnam.  (This is reminiscent of Vonnegut's reason for wanting to write Slaughterhouse-Five, to document the fire-bombing of Dresden during World War II.)  However, as powerful a force as this reason is, it is too general, too vague to get the job done by itself.  It cannot sustain the sense of urgency needed to tell the story.  Something more immediate, more personal, needs to be at stake. 

For Vonnegut, it is to tell his children never to shoot guns.  For O'Brien, the personal reasons are legion, but I will point to one.  After he got his draft notice, O'Brien met an old man named Elroy Berdahl.  Berdahl helped O'Brien during this time, without being intrusive and without thought of how to benefit from O'Brien's troubles.  O'Brien thought himself close to a crack-up over whether to go to Vietnam or not.  O'Brien writes:  "This story represents a small gesture of gratitude twenty years overdue."  I think in this case, the old man acts as a kind of muse for Tim O'Brien.

I'm reminded of what got me though my first novel--it was a promise I had made to my mother many years before that I would write a book for her, not just any book, but a book about my recognition of her pain.  Even after my mother died, she acted as a kind of muse for me, a guiding force and a reason to tell the story.

I love books which talk about the act of story-telling.  I learn from them about my own process and my own reasons for telling stories.  I learn from them why some of my stories work, and why some of them die before they're ever born.

 

Grandeur

It is my duty as

a writer to show

the grandeur, sometimes

naive, sometimes monstrous

and tragic, of life.

some words borrowed from Mircea Eliade, in another context.

*Amendment--Someone has pointed out to me that "duty" is not really the right  word to describe my orientation toward the writing life. 

"Purpose" is more accurate. 

In truth, I am probably anything but "duteous" and have never much liked the word.   I think "duty" implies much more resoluteness (a kind firm knowledge of "right" and "wrong" that I'm not willing to concede).  "Purpose" suggests more of a searching quality, and that portrays my life better.

Enigma

Enigma:  Question, Riddle, Mystery, Puzzle, Problem, Conundrum, Secret

Edward Edinger writes that pain is the "great enigma of existence."  He says:  "It is the perpetual dark companion to sentient being."

Young adults in my classes are often asking me why people don't write happy stories.  They don't mean "happy endings"; they mean stories about good times, all the way through. 

I tell them that happy stories aren't nearly as interesting as unsettling or tragic ones--stories with both happiness and tragedy are even better, for as William Blake wrote, "Without Contraries is no progression.  Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence." 

There is no growth without pain. 

I recently found this writing by someone in the aftermath of physical pain.  The writer has personified pain and is writing in the voice of pain, who, in order to teach, must get the student's attention:

I am deep.  If you would not fear me, be deep like me.

I come from the center.  A point is my sign.  A stab from me is the Cosmic Goad.

If you would not fear me, live each Present Moment with the same intensity that you experience me.

I am the great purifier.  Only the essential can endure me.  All else is burnt away.

I am the great valuer.  All values come from me and my partner, Death.

I am the gateway to the Mysteries.  An image of me is your highest concept of the Sacred.  I am the quintessential Now.  I lie in ambush for those who miss their daily dose of life. This elixir, unconsumed, accumulates and overspills its little vial, raining its concentrated torrent on the negligent soul.

I am the angel of Annunciation for the awesome Now.  Time is a gliding serpent bearing precious jewels upon its back--each jewel a Present Moment. 

Pain is necessary in order to have an encounter with the Self.  With perseverence, Deo volente, light is born from darkness.  The Contraries of darkness and light come together, and one is made whole. 

Or not!  Depending on the story you want to write.

Quotes from Edward Edinger, Encounter With the Self.

 

Vision

 

 

You wish to see; Listen.

Hearing is a step toward Vision.

--Saint Bernard of Clairvaux 1090-1153

 

 

Jung, in writing about artistic creation, revealed that there are two types, the psychological (which deals with experiences of the foreground of life) and the visionary, which is a primordial experience: 

"It is a primordial experience which surpasses man's understanding...  The very enormity of the experience gives it is value and its shattering impact.  Sublime, pregnant with meaning, yet chilling in the blood with its strangeness, it arises from timeless depths. ..."

He says that the psychological mode of artistic creation never rends "the curtain that veils the cosmos."  He says that it doesn't "exceed the bounds of our human capacities..."

But visionary artistic creation rends "from top to bottom the curtain upon which is painted the picture of an ordered world."  This kind of creation allows a "glimpse into the unfathomable abyss of the unborn and of things yet to be...."

Visionary works, according to Jung, include Shepherd of Hermas, the writings of Dante, Faust, Wagner's Ring, Tristan, Parsifal, and William Blake's paintings and poetry. 

As a writer, I'm looking forward to moving, or rather, hoping to move, into this visionary act of creation.

Quote from Jung, "Psychology and Literature," The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature.

Painting:  "When the Morning Stars Sang Together" by William Blake

Eat this Book

Mark Strand, in his famous poem, writes:

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

We look to another author for how the words might taste and where the words go once we eat them:

Son of man...eat this book... And I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that book.  And he said to me:  Son of man, thy belly shall eat, and thy bowels shall be filled with this book, which I give thee.  And I did eat it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth. (Ezekiel 3:1-3)

Words, sweet as honey in the mouth, move to the belly and the bowels, into the innermost parts of our bodies, to be transformed into energy for our bodies and spirits.

I, too, have had the experience of eating words, eating books.  The best of them are like ambrosia, food of the gods.  My heart quickens as I read, and I can feel my heart filling with soul-energy.

I don't want to do less in my own writing.  A great compliment would be for someone to say of my writing:  "I just ate it up."

 

The Secret

In his journal, No Souvenirs (1957-1969) Mircea Eliade writes about his sadness regarding life's obligations, saying,

"What saddens me especially is that for a long time I'll be unable to write and read as I wish.  I sometimes dream of a long, endless summer, waking up every morning overjoyed that the new day will be mine, all mine, and that, if I feel like it, I will be able to squander it, to use it up, writing a book." 

When Eliade says "squander," I don't think he means that writing is a wasteful use of our time; I think of his meaning in this way:  to "squander" is an extreme form of freedom to do what one wants, a freedom very few, if any, individuals have.  There are always obligations that seem to keep us from the work of writing.

Worst of all is when writing itself becomes an obligation.  Of letter writing (which is truly becoming a lost art, I believe), Eliade writes: 

"How I admire E. M. Cioran for his incomparable mastery of the art of letter writing.  I think I have penetrated his secret:  Cioran never writes a letter out of obligation, or because he has nothing better to do, but only when he feels the need to communicate with someone, whether friend or stranger.  And his letter reflects his mood at the moment, a nontemporal mood in a way--in any case, beyond the historical moment." 

How much better  ALL our writings would be, I think, if when we wrote we wrote out of a great NEED to communicate.  Of this need, Eliade writes: 

"How well I understand that!...Today, suddenly, I felt the need to communicate with someone the first impressions that I had of Chicago eight or nine months ago.  I felt them again, vividly and clearly, as I will probably never feel them again." 

What Eliade speaks of here is not an "endless" summer, to be sure, but it is a verdant moment, a moment creation, of profound connection.  I understand the clarity of which Eliade speaks.  I've felt it; it is temporary, unsustainable and we crave to feel it again, as sure as we dream of the warm sunlight on our own bare skin.

Rising and Falling

Labor Day (today) is thought by many to be the "official" end of summer, so this is a good time to reflect on repetition and renewal (death and renewal) as it is represented in the seasons.  And how it is represented in our writing.

As Marguerite Yourcenar points out, the summer solstice is the beginning of the end-- "this apogee signals the beginning of a descent; from now on the days will get shorter and shorter until they reach the nadir of the winter solstice; the astronomical winter begins in June, just as the astronomical summer begins in December." 

The Labor Day Holiday serves to reminds us of this.  

"Verweile doch, du bist so schon."

"Stay with me, you are so beautiful."

As Yourcenar points out, Faust could have said this of the June solstice:   "But he would have said it in vain."

When we write, this same waxing and waning takes place.  We grow close to our subject, it flames.  Then the ideas grow dark and cold.  Remember not to give up when you are in the winter of your thoughts; Our winter prepares us for the summer ahead:  "We are caught in this rising and falling double helix." The burst of creative energy (summer thoughts) can't be sustained.  We need a dark, fallow period in order to regenerate.  When I reach a dark period, I regenerate by reading, doing artwork, watching a film, anything to get close to the spark that will ignite my thoughts again.

Quotes from "Fires of the Solstice" by Marguerite Yourcenar.

I Don't Know

"I do not know who put me in the world, nor what the world is, nor what I am myself.  I am in a terrible ignorance about everything.  I do not know what my body is, or my senses, or my soul, or even that part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects on itself and everything but knows itself no better than anything else." --Blaise Pascal

In earlier journal posts, I wrote of the mystery surrounding the writing act.  This quote by Pascal represents my usual starting place when I come back to my writing project each time.  It's true, not only when I'm in the early stages of a work, but throughout the process.  It's true until I've typed "The End" and meant it.  Even after I've typed "The End."

I think writings by people who are searching are different from those who "know."

On another note, I recently shared with a new internet acquaintance that I felt eternally confused, for the most part, about everything.  This person responded: 

From out here, from an electronic distance plus no doubt geographic distance, you don't appear "confused" at all. Instead you seem delicately sophisticated about, and respectful of, life's quandaries.

I think I'll memorize that one. 

Photo Credit, "Puck" by Marga Hayes Ingram.

Life is Pain

Why write?

I write to learn, to know, to share.  In hopes of being understood.

I've also wondered this:  Are certain forms of writing an act of compassion?  What if I wrote out of compassion?  How would that affect what I write?

 

 

"Life is Pain, but compassion is what gives it the possibility of continuing." --Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth.

Picture credit, "The Parting of Lancelot and Guinevere," 1874.  Julia Margaret Cameron.