To write is to love?

“For me to write is love; it is to inquire and to praise, or to confess or to appeal. Not to assure myself that I am (“I write, therefore I am”), but simply to pay my debt to life, to the world, to other men.  To speak with an open heart and say what seems to me to have meaning.” Thomas Merton, unpublished journal.


Perhaps the snarliest point for me, the knot I cannot unpick, is the "why?" of writing. Perhaps, if I were a more Zen specimen, I would understand the suffering associated with "why?", drop it, and just write. But around writing, my Zen evaporates. Writing triggers me. More than anything else. The whole concept of writing is at once inevitable and irresistable and terrifying. Reading that quote from Thomas Merton (next on my reading list) I am struck by these words: ... Not to assure myself that I am. (I write, therefore I am.)


I've had moments of wisdom around this idea before, like in this blog post, Everything Matters a few months ago now. Those moments are fleeting. I get clear and still and everything makes perfect sense. Perfect sense. And then a cloud of murk descends and I'm wrestling and punching inside heavy blanket in the dark. Wrestling with the exact same things I was so clear about yesterday.
 
Since New Year's Day I have been meditating, sitting in the Proper Position (finally, I can't keep on trying to beat the system by doing it lying down under a cosy blanket) for 15 minutes. This is first thing before I speak or greet the dog or have tea or open any electronic devices. It's a very fresh time. And still my mind is busy racing around, designing gazebos for summer lounging, reaming out the doctor for being so slow with specialist referrals, inventing catastrophes for me to endure and overcome. It's all a big cartoon show in there. I manage, in the 15 minutes, a few conscious silent breaths. The miracle is that I can actually sit for 15 minutes and not squirm. I can watch the thoughts, catch them, and let them go. I am starting to see how much of my so-called "reality" is made up stuff in my fertile amazing magical mind. And I can also see the glorious potential of putting that mind to creative and compassionate use, rather than its stale old boring fearful rerun loop. 

Writing to prove existence is a very heavy idea. Writing to speak with an open heart some truth and meaning, now that's a different story altogether. 

A memory a day

What if I wrote down one memory every day? I'll have a book in a year.

I bought a new rain jacket today. It is turquoise, Goretex, really soft and comfortable. It reminded me of the coats mum made for Julie and me when we were about 8 and 5. Around 1968. Not that there is any resemblance. Those coats were mod. They were made from upholstery-grade vinyl, bright orange, stippled slightly to look like leather. They were slightly flared, simple, just-above-the-knee, identical twins with wide collars and two square pockets on the front. Mum hammered the silver snap dome fasteners up the front, making sure they matched exactly. She hand stitched with brown thread around the collar and pockets, and I think up the front opening. They were very mod. They were also heavy and stiff. We could hardly move in them. I think maybe this was part of the appeal for mum, who liked her children to stand still and look good. In all the family photos there are none of us wearing those coats. That surprises me. They were such a dressmaking achievement.

A day later:
I wanted to remember how I felt wearing that coat. It's easier for me to get into that description if I put it in the present tense. I feel like I often feel around clothing. Confused. It's a new coat, it's a happy orange colour. I want to be happy. I feel like a paper doll with a heavy coat stuck on me. Flat. I feel flat and heavy. I can't run and play. I can just stand there. I feel like I've got white gloves on, but that's another outfit, another awkward dressing up and standing outside the Waikiwi church at a little sister's christening. Not knowing what to do or say. Or feel. Just being good.

Mum would dress us up to go out, and we would be on display. People would exclaim at the outfits Mum had made us, always matching, always fashionable, sometimes edgy in a modest, proper way. We were the dolls she dressed up and took out to show her friends. I got used to being scrutinised, and commented on. I felt like my outfits were more important than I was. That's what was confusing. Today I might yell out "Hello!!! There's a human being trapped inside this orange vinyl coat!!!"

How sweet it is to be loved by me

Me: I'm back with a New Year's resolution to do a daily writing practice.

She: Welcome! How is it feeling?

Me: I'm determined to do this. Not in a blood and guts, bludgeoning kind of way, but in a purposeful, deliberate way. I have to write. I want to and need to do it. Words are my great love. Writing is a gift. And I have spent my whole life tangled up in knots about it. I'm 55 now, and if I'm lucky I'll have another 35 - 45 years left in me. Time to love this thing called writing, and do it for the love. Can I pull it off? Yes! All I need is a new sound track.

It's pretty devastating to realise the soundtrack that haunted my childhood is still broadcasting loud and clear 50 years later. Mine's nothing special, just a rendition of a Beatles hit from the 60s: "Then I saw my face!! I'm such a big loser!!" And actually, it's no longer loud, or clear. But it's still there, a low-level background rumble that's so familiar I don't notice it any more. Trouble is, the messaging, the words, carry clout, even when I'm not conscious of them.

So that loser sound track really has to go.

Something good has come from all this procrastinating over writing. I have been reading too much great quality Buddhist teaching, popular science and psychology, listening to many many Deepak Chopra Facebook videos...  getting to grips with that question that's been bugging me since I was old enough to string thoughts together, "Who the fuck am I?"

The Buddhist teachers, the Buddha himself, Deepak Chopra and even the Dalai Lama have been very helpful with this. They all have different philosophies, but they all insist on one important point--I am not who I think I am. I am not who I've been told I am, or who I was expected or forced to be, or who I resigned myself to be. This is seriously great news, because I've been dragging around a suitcase of very awkward and heavy shit about this very subject. Back breaking, spirit breaking, nasty stinking lies perpetuated by the lyrics of my soundtrack. I believe those guys are right.

I am not a loser. I am not naughty or dirty. I am not bad or broken. I am not too serious. I am not too sensitive. I am not lazy. I am not lacking. I don't talk too much. I don't have my head in the clouds (actually, I do, and it's a perfectly fine place for my head to be.) I'm not too big for my boots. I'm not a smarty pants. I'm not funny (peculiar) to be worried about the meaning of life. I'm not anti-social. I'm not a freak for writing in a journal. I'm not a sinner, either. Or a slut. Oh yeah, and I'm not a disappointment, at least not to me.

Whew!! That's better out than in.

Deepak, the Buddhists, and the DL also all agree that I am wise, creative, compassionate, kind and loving -- sounds divine! We all are, at our core. Until we get brainwashed to think otherwise. So really, the work of life is to un-believe all that bullshite that's stuck to us over the years, and get back in touch with our gorgeous glorious divine insides.

That of course is at least half a life's work for some of us, maybe more. But it's good work. Honest work. So much better work than dragging around a couple of ton of toxic rocks.

I think my new sound track will be James Taylor's hit from 1975, "How sweet it is to be loved by me!"