Writings about Writing
May, 1998I write whenever I feel the need to write, wherever I happen to be, on whatever I happen to have around that I can record the thoughts on. I carry a notebook in my backpack, so I write in that little book when I’m alone somewhere and sitting down (in cafes, etc.). Often I find myself in situations where I’m jotting down notes on pieces of scrap paper or on little tablets, and I transfer these notes into my main journal when I get the chance. I also keep little tablets in almost every room of my house, for the insights that might come to me spontaneously. The little tablet in my bathroom, for instance, gets written on a lot, because it seems that being in water (taking a bath) triggers important thoughts that need to be written down. My journals/notebooks are filled with fragments, aphorisms, visions, intuitions, sensings, memories, lamentations, fears, observations, questions, poetic psychologies and philosophies, criticisms, appreciations, quotes from books and letters, dreams, ideas, nature notes, reflections, parodies of myself and others, wonderings, longings, moments slowed down in words, overheard conversations, and many other bits and pieces that make up my probing, eccentric self. I ponder love, death, technology, childhood, the cycles of nature, beliefs, unbelief, animals, human nature, and many other themes. Most of these themes have remained for many years, and seem to be part of my essence. When I write I gravitate toward the center of the cyclone, to the root. I condense. I rarely write about what I do; that doesn’t interest me. Mostly, I write about the heart of things—qualities that strike me as disturbing or beautiful. But more than writing about something, I take myself into the thought or fear I’m writing about, so I become it. My words pour out of the essence of myself, seeking the essence of everything/everyone else I explore. Writing, to me, means intensity, passion, urgency. Writing about my inner life is what unifies all my experiences, and translates into the very meaning of my life. I often find myself inventing my own words and phrasings, my own language-style, as I go along. A lot of my entries are like spontaneous poems. This is the natural outcome of not holding back, of not trying to write or think like someone else. It took me a long time to unexpectedly evolve to this point of freedom. After over 40 years of writing down my life, I see that the only journal-land I’m at home in is my own non-conforming world where I can’t follow anyone else’s advice or rules or ideas or style. My journal represents that place where I can make love to that part of myself that no one else loves. I can be my most extreme, radical self—my core. I can say anything. I can experience the darkness (writing about it turns it into something beautiful, even). I can go to those places that no one else I know wants to go to with me. So I go alone, but I don’t feel alone when I’m writing or re-reading what I’ve written, because my notebook is there with me, as if it’s the god of myself that transcends loneliness. There’s this voice inside me that isn’t like any other voice I can ever speak aloud. My journal is that voice.
June, 1998Re-reading some recent journals, I found these thoughts about writing: I write because it’s a sort of meditation, and my only superficial peace. Writing takes me to the point where I can harmonize with what is disturbing. (9/8/97) * * * Who would I want to read my journal? An insightful, compassionate voyeur, perhaps. Or, maybe I'm secretly writing to/for the god I wish existed, the god I longed for during my childhood and teenage years... Or, I’m writing to that part of myself (and all of us) that can forgive. As if true and original writing makes forgiveness natural. (9/26/97) * * * Writing is the process of removing the outer wrapping to dive into the inner pool. The words on the pages—the tangible aspect of them—become the bridges between inner and outer, seen and unseen. How else can I reveal the worlds and worlds (and depths within depths) that I perceive? (11/12/97) * * * All my writing is a reflection of my core, bits of my core. All those bits...and as they fall onto the page, the puzzle automatically gets put together—the way a plant gets put together just by being itself and growing day-by-day. Journals are the organic side of my essence, unfolding... (12/21/97) * * * The only place where I can go into my own world is in my journal. Everywhere else is the place where I go into the world of others. (12/22/97) * * * I like fragmentary writing, I seem to only be able to read fragments, feel fragments. And write fragments. (And live fragments.) The pieces naturally form a whole to me, the way minutes make up hours and hours make up days. Fragments flow, to me, in ways that unfragmented writings do not. They flow because they feel natural; yes, fragments feel natural, organic, uncomposed. A story well-composed might be beautiful, but it feels like a beautiful mask to me. Fragments are like the naturalness of children. Maybe that’s why I like fragments: because I can remain in childhood. (1/9/98) * * * I must get these words (notes) down. Later, I will refine them if they need refining. This isn’t a self-conscious thing, or a detraction from the spontaneous journal words. No, to me it feels like I’m getting closer to what I really mean, closer to my core, every time I refine. Sometimes the words need to be rearranged or changed to clear away the clutter that obscures the core. (I lost self-consciousness in these notebooks decades ago.) I care about what is said, and I care about how it is said. They’re twins, and together they form the whole point and meaning of my journal. Nothing is forced. Nothing is censored. I write what I want to write, how I want to write it, when I want to write it. When I edit something for other eyes, I do that, too, in the same spirit as the original writing...it’s just that I am polishing. Polishing, to bring out the original core. If an entry is too wordy, or not wordy enough, the polishing becomes a way to see into the intricate patterns, the clear complexity. Without the "right words" there’s only fog covering what needs to be seen. I see all so-called editing as clearing the fog. It’s only when essence is removed or censored that I see danger in editing. (3/7/98) * * * The illusion that these pages hear me, that they listen. Otherwise, would I be writing these words if I felt these pages couldn’t hear? (3/17/98)
July, 1998There's a very specific and special voice that my journal writing has. It’s not a voice I ever deliberately sought, but a voice that evolved unconsciously over time which seems to express the most true self I am. A bottom-line self that I don’t judge—though I’m very aware that someone reading my journal would probably judge me, or misinterpret what I’m saying (I often write with my own built-in irony and parody). Many journal writers, these days, seem to lament that they "whine" in their journals, and they note that they want to do this less. These self-judgments remind me of those who’re reluctant to look in the mirror without make-up on, because they dislike what they see when they do. But perhaps the eyes through which they assume they clearly see are really the glasses they’ve been taught to wear. I’ve always longed for "words of wisdom" for myself (in the form of insights and free expression), but now I see that "whines of wisdom" are just as true and valuable. By letting my expressions blossom, exactly how they need to, those whines become wisdoms just by being uncensored and unique. To write down my life is to honor it, is to transform expression into something much more than a "whine". The journal, then, preserves my life, the whine/wine of my life...and it’s the feeling of being intoxicated with life, which then creates the need to write. (It has just occurred to me, as I write this, that I might title my current journal Whines of Wisdom.) By wisdom I mean seeing with my own true eyes—like having x-ray vision—where I can see into myself and others without too many pre-packaged ideas of what I’m looking at. To me, wisdom is the place where I can sink down into the very heart and core of a life-theme, feeling, thought, fear, etc. So those whines of wisdom become personal truths, and they’re liberating in the process of being expressed and explored. I never really know who I am until I travel into myself with wonder and curiosity and then surface with words. It’s as if the whines of wisdom plunge me into a clear pool of honesty. I even whine about beauty and about what I love. It’s all the same to me now, and I don’t judge what I write, feel, or think as negative; I don’t look upon myself as an object to change or as a problem to solve. I just let the depths speak, as if I become a part of the timeless cycles of Nature that way. I express my seasons on paper without holding back the wind, rain, sun, shade, earthquakes. As if everything is sacred and special when felt all the way. My life is full and rich when I’m writing about the deep inner places on the pages of my personal notebook. And this is true no matter what is going on in my life, no matter how much inspiration or pain I’m experiencing: it’s all the whine/wine of my life, and I see all life as a mystery, a miracle.
Early August, 1998The image I hold of myself as a journal writer is more like a quality that I feel about my inner passion and perceptions rather than a concrete self-image. This quality/image is like sensing the essence of myself. When I write in my notebook, I write my perceptions and intuitions, and even when I'm not writing, I’m perceiving. In that sense, it’s my essence to always be writing...but often the "writing" is only in my consciousness and not on paper. (What ends up on paper are those perceptions which feel most urgent to me, and I either condense the many perceptions or expand upon a heightened moment.) I’m intense about living and writing—the mix of the two. I can’t separate them, I can’t focus on one without the other. They feed each other, they need each other...like breathing in and out. (I carry a notebook everywhere, as if air.) When I write, I’m making the intangible tangible; I’m revealing what would otherwise remain private, secret. I bring the intangibles up from the hidden depths and expose them on the surface of the page, or dive down into those depths to explore (with my notebook leading the way). Writing in a journal is my way of experiencing the mystery of birth and new life: the thoughts are born on the page, and then they begin to breathe, live, grow. The journal is the most important thing in my life because it’s the place where I can most fully animate who I am. It’s the me without a mask or social costume. I can say to anyone: If you really want to know me, read my journal. I don’t feel the need to write in my notebook all the time, because living, itself, is part of the same force that inspires me to write. Yet I’m selective: I write about what can’t easily be spoken out loud, what can’t fit into a conventional style of communication. That's the journal’s purpose/meaning to me: it’s the place (home) where my most personal language can live and experiment and expand. Journals can mean many different things to many different kinds of people, and I honor these contrasting journals/lives. But for me the journal is my art and the work of my life. My handwritten journal is the rough draft. Later I edit...but the editing isn’t a censoring, but the organizing/harmonizing of material. When no one else is there, my journal is, hence it’s the most important thing in my life. As long as I’m alive, my notebooks will be alive too...no matter what is happening in my life. My journal is more than my shadow; it’s my heartbeat, my essence. To externalize the depths—to explore that place in writing—is the way I turn life into art. And that’s what’s most important to me, that’s the image I hold of myself as a journal writer: living life as art.
Late August, 1998My journals are filled with fragments and aphorisms. I think about this a lot, about why I’m drawn to fragmentary writings, and those explorations end up in my journal. What follows are a few examples of where that "why" spontaneously led me (from my Seattle Journal #62). * * * The aphoristic writings fall onto the page out of silence, and the blank space on the page around the words is a visible kind of silence, bathing the words. Aphorisms are like words taking a bath in the tub of silence. They soak there, dreaming (or splashing), a little bit of fluid endless space around them, contained. Aphorisms feel like chips from my 'soul', colors from my essence. The essence is the ocean; the aphoristic words are a wave, a splash, from the infinite sea. They’re also just one footprint in the sand—a footprint from the body of essence. And the print will remain until the page is tossed away. (November 12, 1997) * * * People want a story, they can’t fall into literature and live there, be moved there, unless there’s a story. But stories don’t involve me as much as fragments and impressions do. Fragments, impressions, and aphorisms are like surprises, kisses, distinct melodies. They stick, they’re remembered, they get my immediate attention and leave their mark. I write fragments and aphorisms because that’s the way I feel life. I don't have a story I want to tell, but impressions that I need to reveal and expose. Stories seem too much like instructions in a book, to me; they must be "followed" or else you get lost. The fragments and impressions require nothing but your intensity, your openness. They transcend mind. A story is a road map, but an impression is off the map. I love the territory that’s off the map, those individual foot-paths into the hills where few go, and the spectacular view at the top. I also love the view from the bottom of the hill, that feeling I get just looking up and letting my imagination take me all the way to the top. Stories can’t fly, but aphorisms can, in one quick burst. (December 8, 1997) * * * Amazing, the way these fragments accumulate, the way the pages in a diary over just a few months can become a book. (December 17, 1997) * * * Aphorisms are like intense photographs that invite us to come in; long, prose entries in a journal are like films that we enter as we sit in a movie theater. The prose entries move all over the place, flowing like rivers; but the aphorisms are gems, composed of the essence of everything that the rivers carried downstream. In small, compressed, glittering fragments, the gems reflect a wild peace. Aphorisms are the diamonds of words. (December 22, 1997)
September, 1998It fascinates me to reread my past journals, to note the themes that continue or fade, to see how I used to write about writing. I’ve saved 30 years worth of journals. I just counted them: there are now just under 200 separate notebooks. Some of the notebooks are small and worn (they were carried in my purse or kept in my car); others are very thick and large, well-kept. Some of them have photographs (of myself, or a lover, or the place where I lived) affixed to the inside covers. And some of the earlier journals contain drawings. The themes haven’t changed a lot in 30 years, but they’ve deepened. Basically, I still lean toward writing/exploring life philosophically and psychologically, and expressing those subjects in the form of poetic prose, questions, aphorisms. I’m still the searcher, but for the last few years I’ve deeply embraced how I see/feel the world instead of trying to change myself to fit some other group’s spiritual beliefs or psychological theories. I’ve made a break with most contemporary values and have ceased to doubt myself in the ways I used to, and in the process I’ve found a home within my own intuitions. So many things have come and gone in my life, but my journals/notebooks have been a constant. This morning I started peeking into my oldest journals, to see what I wrote about writing. Here are a few passages I found, just by quickly glancing through:
October, 1998Why do people write? Are there as many motivations as there are forms of writing? Novels... short stories... poetry... essays... spiritual writings... memoirs... letters... journals & diaries... etc... What do all these writings have in common? What do all the authors of these writings have in common? This morning, as I was waking up to the autumn smell of early morning rain, I was thinking these thoughts/questions. May Sarton said that she wrote journals to give meaning to the ordinary days. She said she wrote novels to answer questions in her mind. And she said that poems "are written to yourself and to God. If someone overhears them, that's fine." Elie Wiesel wrote, "I write to understand as much as to be understood." And: "Why do I write? Perhaps in order not to go mad." Our reasons reflect our uniqueness as well as the universal desire to go beneath the surface and transcend time, to create a map of our lives, to externalize inner experiences, to dive deep and bring up treasures that would remain forever unseen had we not taken the plunge. What we choose to write about, and the forms and language we feel driven to inhabit, reveal a lot about us. I choose letters and journals. Why? Because these forms allow me to intimately embrace the wonderful paradox of memory and immediacy, past and present. The past is made present by memory, by the primal ritual of remembering. Just the other day I was at an antiquarian book sale, and I ran across some Nancy Drew mystery books from the 1950s. I picked one up and deliberately, ritualistically, smelled the old pages. Immediately I was 11 years old again, sitting underneath the old elm tree in the backyard of my childhood house, surrendering to the power of words and imagination on a hot summer afternoon. (I could almost see the shadows of the leaves dancing on the pages.) It wasn’t that I was taken back in time, smelling those pages, but that time stopped. Memory had expanded into a feeling of the eternal present, a timelessness. To smell those old pages from my pre-teen years was to immediately marry the past and present, and that marriage became magic. Memory is imagination, and imagination is a river. Memory isn’t just a bunch of once-alive events that can be brought back through documentation and displayed like a collection of butterflies. No, memory is part of imagination's river, and I can dip into it at any time. I always hear that river, though sometimes it's just a distant sound/calling. But that sound never leaves me, and I can never leave it. No matter what I'm doing, it's close by or not too far away. I walk beside it, and sometimes I dive in and let it carry me anywhere. Writing is the act of diving in, then being taken to a surprise place. Writing is the experience of being carried in the river. (As I'm writing this, I’m being carried, and I don’t know upon what shore these words will land, or even where I've been...but this daringness is why I love to write.) To remember/re-experience childhood: it's the feeling of going back to another time and place, almost like the intensity of watching a favorite old movie with all its period details. I'm drawn into my memories the way I’m drawn into a favorite movie, finding the essence of the human heart there. Memory is human, warm. And then the going-back becomes the now, and the now grows and grows. I write because my past and present are twins, part of a bigger mystery that I can’t contain—so I burst out with words on the page (drops from the river). And the form the burst takes is usually letters or journals. The crows caw, the wind whistles, the ocean roars, this old house creaks, the hungry cats meow, and I sing or scream or sigh in the letters and journals I write.
November, 1998Keeping a journal is a sort of love affair. I was just writing about this in my journal this morning: how the act of writing in a journal is very intimate, and hence has the quality of a secret love affair. Actually, everything I write about in my private notebook feels intimate to me, not just the act of writing. The love affair is with language, expression, searching, the subtle and blatant impressions and discoveries. Writing in a journal is the way I love, and the notebook I carry around with me feels like a lingering embrace. My journal allows me to go anywhere, and I take it everywhere. It seduces me to go to places that I'd be afraid to go to without it. I also noted in my journal this morning how everything in my life comes together in one place, and that place is my journal. What's missing in my life (expressed as lamentations)—as well as what overflows from my life—fills the pages of my notebooks. It's as if my journal is the meeting point, the union, of everything I live, remember, and seek. It's also the meeting point of everything contradictory in me. So, in a sense, the journal represents the place where I become integrated. All the pieces are there, piece-by-piece, and form a whole. The journal naturally puts together the puzzle of myself. By writing about what troubles me—and being able to articulate that—I begin to soften the sharp edges of the hard truths I try to face about myself, others, and the world out there. Articulation allows me to embrace the dark side. To leave the dark side unexpressed, or pushed down, or avoided, is to taint my consciousness...and then I feel inarticulate, unseeing, and I can't find my way to the light. A lot of entries reflect the dark journeys, but in writing about them I'm naturally led to the light through them. It's similar to the experience of sitting in a dark room. At first, there's total darkness; you can't see a thing. But as you sit there, and allow yourself to experience the beauty of the darkness, then the light starts to ease in and slowly you begin to see. My journal is the place where I embrace all my intensities, all the darknesses and the light, and in that embrace I set myself free.
December, 1998Morning thoughts, while sitting at my breakfast table and listening to the rain fall outside: In my journal I ask the questions I can't ask anyone else (questions that have no answers). In my journal I give the secrets that no one wants to hear. In my journal I reveal what can't be revealed elsewhere. In my journal I can repeat myself, I can express the same themes over and over again in many different ways (and as the words hit the page, they always feel fresh). In my journal the moment is always fresh. In my journal there are extremes...the extremes of my thinking, feeling, questioning. In my journal I see we are mysteries, not problems to be solved. I see myself as part of nature when I write. In my journal I see people as art, so journals become the extension of the art of myself—journals as the improvised music of self. In my journals my life becomes poetry, no matter what I'm expressing. Journals are the way I turn my life into poetry. In my journal I wrote, "I want to write my way into the essence of things." That is make makes a life (and a journal) alive to me: to never forget essence. To follow its scent wherever it leads.
January, 1999I feel no separations between what I think/feel/experience/write. It's all part of the same pattern, the same river. Because my life and my writing are one, there’s a constant edge to my life, a constant drama. In the process of writing I discover many truths and lies. I also discover that often I can't tell the difference between the two, as if they’re twins. Fact flows into fiction and fiction flows into fact. Memory and imagination guarantee this. I love the feeling of a thought bursting inside me and driving me to my pen—the way the silent intangibility of a powerful thought or feeling suddenly becomes worthy of ink and ends up as words in my notebook. So many little bursts of intangibility on every page. I also love the ritual of rereading what I’ve written, like running into old friends. "Yes, yes," I say to myself, as I rediscover an apt image, a startling insight from the past. And then the past and present are suddenly married. There’s a certain atmosphere which captures me in the before-during-after phases of my thinking-writing-rereading. This atmosphere has become the substance of my life, and has grown to include not only the rereading of my journals, but also the process of editing them. There's so much work to be done—work which isn't work, but meaning and passion. When I'm out in the world I watch people. I'm transported from my more solitary life into the lives of others, then. I feel essences on faces, I listen to words and phrases, I watch the way people individually move. These strangers become a part of my life, even if I never speak to them, especially when I just intensely watch. Sometimes I write about the more interesting people I see. I have names for some of the loners that I often pass on the street: The Walker, The Nun, The Pilgrim—all of them about my age. I've thought of keeping a journal that is just a journal about strangers. A journal full of facts and imagination. The Pilgrim rides his 1950s bike in his old, tattered clothes; he looks like someone right out of the Middle Ages. Where does he live? What was his life like 30 years ago? What has happened to him to give him the courage to ride an old bike through life, while everyone else is buying expensive cars and condos? His face is worn, but quiet and kind. He seems wise. I want to talk to him, but I also don’t want to break the spell. The spell, then, goes into my journal. And the journal feeds on it, relishes it. Writing is adventure. Writing is birth. Writing is my humanity. Writing is my best and worst selves joining hands and singing at the top of their lungs in harmony.
April, 1999My journal is an underground voice, the opposite of a public voice. Journal writing animates the unseen dramas, and brings statues of memories to life. * * * Who am I writing to when I write in my journal? To myself, yes (always), but also to the imaginary someone who’s curious and open, who can be moved. * * *
Contemporary life says: Forget the magic of
language, the magic of life itself. * * * My journal is the place where I catch the brief, wild moments of insights & revelations. * * * Joubert wrote, "The thoughts that come to us are worth more than the ones we seek." That is what my journal is filled with: the thoughts which come to me, not those I seek. (Let the original voice be heard, in all its extremes and weirdnesses.) * * * She asked me what I did for fun. "I go to movies," I said, "and take walks, and...write in my journal." (She looked at me strangely.) * * * The moment becomes a poem when it's framed by the ritual of writing in my notebook. And to love to write is to love my life. * * * My notebooks are two-fold: they're the secret maps of my interior life, and they're the rough draft of the writings I want to publish. * * * I'm haunted by life. The more haunted I feel, the more urgently my journal says: make it beautiful. * * * I see my journal as a treasure chest, not a dumping ground. The treasure chest is filled to the top with the sparkling jewels of pain and appreciations. * * * My journal speaks from the center of who I am. It doesn't engulf me; it finds me and fills me (as I find it and fill it). * * * I belong to another time and place. The journal saves me from the cold heat of what I'll never fit into, and chants: intimacy, intimacy. * * * My journals catch the overflow of my thoughts. And I'm always overflowing.
July, 1999We can't get rid of the parts of ourselves that we don't like; we can only become more of what we are (and have that overpower the parts we don't want). The journal is the place where I undress myself, revealing what I am, not what I’d like to be. The journal is the place where I rediscover the voices that have been silenced by the world. What’s underneath the nice voices (and familiar clothing) is the unique, roaring truth. * * * Is Writing about Writing like Thinking about Thinking? * * * I don't want to compose; I just want to write spontaneously, in the moment, from deep feeling and need. I write only when I'm moved to write. Otherwise, why write? I don't need to search for a topic; I only need the time and place to put down the thoughts which burn me. (I must write, to keep from burning up.) * * * My thoughts are hummingbirds that move fast, leaving their flutterings and colors in the form of images/words in my journal. * * * My journal is the only place where I feel that I'm allowed to be "negative"... hence it's a relief, a wild ride. It's the place where my own language-style can unfold without the restraints of how I'm "supposed" to be or what people want to hear. It's like the darkness of a movie theater or a dream. The words roll out, freely, and as I write I'm pulled into the images I create—just as if I'm watching a movie, only in my journal it's my own movie. The movie that writes/lives itself in the moment. My journal is like a lover that naturally draws out the core of me. And the pages give the illusion of an embrace. * * * A journal of metaphors—is that what my journal is? * * * I don't want to borrow another writer’s language or style or voice. I want to let my own voice find its freedom, no matter what it says or sounds like. I don’t want to have a chit-chat with myself; instead, I want to sing harmonies...arias...and play strange tunes on strange instruments...and erupt in moody quartets where my voices "play" together and become one piece. * * * My journal is beyond therapy—and hence the best "therapy" of all.
September, 1999To write in my journal is to go back to the planet that I'm from. In words I can live there again, like returning to my childhood home for just awhile. And yet it's not really for "just awhile," because my journal reflects where I live all the time in my heart and mind. * * * Writing in my notebook is freedom, anarchy. I must write in my own language, otherwise I feel jailed and can't inhabit my own skin. "Wearing" someone else's language is petty theft. If I can't let my own eccentric voice cry out at its own pace and in its own way, then I'm a fake, and my journal is worthless. * * * When I write in my journal I don't feel that I'm just talking to myself. It's more the feeling that I'm dancing with some sort of wild god, a god who treasures and honors all my imperfections—as if those imperfections are works of art that deserve the recognition that the pages give them. * * *
Write write write
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