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 Thomas Merton, unpublished journal.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!"

Over the right shoulder

She: You're back.
Me: Hmmm. Yes. Reluctantly.
She: But you're here.
Me: I've been realising that avoiding writing is a habit, based on something, someone I think I am. Tied up with identity. Someone who's suffering, and thinks that writing will heal the suffering. But if I stop suffering, then who will I be? In some ways I think writing will save my life. I give it this tremendous weight and importance. And so I don't do it. I avoid and fear it instead.

It's exactly the same loop as the drinking/quitting drinking loop, except I cracked that one -- exposed it I suppose is a better way of putting it. I quit drinking, nearly 1,000 days ago. I needed to, wanted to, thought it would heal the suffering, had it all tied up with identity, thought it would save my life. Gave it tremendous weight and importance. All those things matter. They all happened. But quitting drinking wasn't conclusive in the way I expected it would be. It was just the end of one thing and the start of something else. Definitely something better. I never regret being a non-drinker. It's become normal. And I can learn from this.

Writing is just normal for me. It's not a huge shattering deal. It doesn't have to be at least. I can write because I'm drawn to it. I think I've been looking for more valid reasons for doing it.

She: what do you mean by "valid"?
Me: I've felt like I've needed a bloody good reason to write. To heal myself, to heal the world, to expose the truth, to make a living, to make an impression, to inspire, to entertain, to deal with the anger I still feel toward my parents, to make sense of life, to make something of my life, to leave something worthwhile behind, to validate myself somehow.
She: How does that feel?
Me: A huge burden. That's why I avoid it. Too much pressure.
She: Where is the pressure coming from?
Me: Interesting question. I can locate it in space over my right shoulder, about a meter away, higher up than me. I can't "see" it... like it doesn't have a shape or colour. But it does have a message.
She: ... which is?
Me: "You will NEVER be a writer."
She: How do you feel about that? Start in your body.
Me: Hot in the chest. Tightness around the shoulder blades. Fingers want to curl up. And toes. I'm actually feeling quite relaxed today, so I'm not having a huge reaction to be honest. It's pretty mild.
She: How does it feel mentally?
Me: Old and annoying, boring even. Incredibly strong. Like the grip of something dead. It can't let go. But it can't do anything else either. Powerful and powerless at the same time.
She: Good description.
Me: I can see it for what it is. A very old, strong, dead idea. That's all it is. How can I let go of it? How can I get it to let go of me? I don't know what to do.
She: Just keep writing.
Me: OK.

The whole point, and why I have two bums

All this time, all this struggling and effort clusters around one piece of annoying grit: what's the point? What's the point of anything? "Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?" as Stephen Hawking put it. And on a mini level, why do I go to all the bother of caring about why I exist and what it's all for and all about? I'm like a dog with a very juicy, indestructible bone, and I'm not the only one in the world. Not by any stretch.

I'm hung up on childhood. Why it was so weird. What was so weird about it. Am I a Benjamin Button who did all the grown up things first and get to do the child things now. I mean that's kind of happening, in a way, or could if I would let it.

Everywhere, even on public radio, we're bombarded with messages about respecting ourselves, trusting our intuition, following our hearts, being authentic. As a child I was aggressively brainwashed into distrusting myself, my intuition, my heart. The only thing to trust was adults, particularly parents but adults in general, and the Catholic church. Basically bad until you proved you were worthy, unlovable unless you behaved in certain slavish and demeaning ways, untrustworthy to the bone. Bad, wrong, naughty, untrustworthy.

Is it the intensity of the damage that comes with those messages that drives me toward finding some meaning. Is it the habit of looking for an answer -- an answer that someone else has, and I don't have, and I will unlikely get until I'm good enough which will probably be never?

I don't remember the polio injection story. I was just told it. But it might explain something about the separation I felt from mum all my life. One of the side effects of going to school was taking swimming lessons, which in turn involved being see naked or near naked by classmates. This what when I found out there was something wrong with my bottom, or my leg, depending on how you looked at it. I had a normal enough bottom, but on the left side, I appeared to have two bottoms, one about 8cm lower than the regular one. The flesh and skin on the left leg was pulled into a pursed mouth of a scar. Actually there are two scars, like two small smiles, etched into the top of my leg.

I don't remember who pointed it out or asked why I had two bums, but I do remember mum telling me that next time anyone brought it up I should tell them I was bitten by a shark at Oreti beach, and the scar was where its teeth went in. I was thrilled by this story, and I feel sure I showed off my shark bite to anyone who was interested, just to get the attention.

But the true story also came out. The scar was a polio vaccination injection gone wrong. New Zealand had a couple of polio epidemic in the 1950s (and several in earlier decades of the 1900s). It was routine to vaccinate babies. I have just read that in 1960 an oral vaccination was released in New Zealand, but I had the injection variety, in the big thigh muscle on the left leg. The vaccination site got infected, and what should have been a quick healing jab turned pussy and nasty. The doctor came to clean and drain it. I screamed till I was blue in the face. It took a long time to heal, the doctor couldn't come every day, so it was mum's job to keep the wound clean, and keep it opened up. The doctor told her if she didn't keep it opened up, I would get a deep scar on my leg. My screaming disturbed mum so much that she stopped opening up the wound, and I got a scar. Good for mum. There is no way I would have been able to do something like that to a baby -- to hurt it like that.

I don't mind having that scar. I have never minded. I still refer to it as my shark bite. But I do wonder if that was the start of me fearing mum. If for the short while that she followed doctors orders and pried open my infected leg, I seized up and shrank from her. Is it even possible for a baby to react that way? Certainly I had plenty of other reasons to shrink away later in life, but maybe it all started with the trauma of so much physical pain at the hands of my primary caregiver. Maybe. If so, I would really like to know why.

More Coming

There's more coming. Lots I think. I wake up, in my Canadian bedroom in my new Canadian life and the stories are swirling galaxies out to the edges of my mind, forming, floating apart. Always mum and dad, always Invercargill, as many questions and gaps as stories. Fragments and feelings, fleeting bits and pieces of lives bound so inevitably together and yet so clearly random.

The thing I'm still grappling with is the act of writing. The urge, the tide of it, the shame and guilt and fear about it still alive and well. And a gap too, in the why of it. Why write, why want to, why indulge this urge? I feel like a tree that's been hacked back but keeps coming back for more. Can't be stopped. I don't have a handle on the force of it. I think the answer is knowing that it's actually got nothing to do with me. Not personally. Why else am I here anyway? I will write. More. It's coming.

Everything matters

Me: I've just understood the urge to write. It's because everything matters. Absolutely everything. And writing honours that simple fact. Memories matter. Families matter. The smell of cut grass matters.

We spend so much of our lives wondering what it's all about, looking for meaning and a way to belong. And all the time, we totally matter, we totally mean something, just by our existence.

To question writing about anything is blind and ignorant.

We need to write about absolutely everything. Nothing is too small, too dull, insignificant. Nothing.

She: Yes. Yes, that's right.

Me: Thanks for helping me know this. I feel like I could now write every day, with passion and burning, just like I've wanted to all my life.

She: Yes, you can.

Me: Woot!