Oracles of the Day

“One of the hardest things to make a child understand is, that down underneath your feet, if you go far enough, you come to blue sky and stars again; that there really is no “down” for the world, but only in every direction an “up.” And that this is an all-embracing truth.”

…It is also what “we grown children find it hardest to realize, too.”—Anne Gilchrist

 

Occasionally, I randomly open a book to see what it offers for the day. After the above I found this morning, I opened Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones, (1986) page 48 (30th Anniversary Edition), and this spoke to me.

“A writer must say yes to life, to all of life, the water glasses, the Kemp’s half and half, the ketchup on the counter. It is not a writer’s task to say, “It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a café’ when you can eat macrobiotics at home.”

Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist—the absolute truth of who we are—several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth across from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop those details from becoming.”—Natalie Goldberg.

At first I wasn't going to blog this week--declare Tuesday a day of mourning, but then I wrote my apologies, and now I can't help myself--well, I could, but I don't want to. In times of trouble, I turn to my computer and books for solace. I am passing on what I found this morning for the artists out there (all of you are) and those suffering for what they fear to come.

Before my last post, titled “I Apologize,” I began writing about writing and on being an artist, then decided it wasn’t addressing what I felt was important. I’ve changed my mind. Becoming an artist is important.

 Once, a prominent psychiatrist told me that writing is self-aggrandizement.

What an idiot.

I don’t care how many credentials he had, he still missed the point, traumatized me, and besmirched all literature.

If you have decided that you are imposing your great wisdom on someone, then you might be accused of aggrandizement, but if you want to become an artist—that’s a different story. (The psychiatrist disagreed with the writer of a book I was reading.)

An artist wants to express himself, which takes many forms—artistry is creative expression.

Art is where your heart is.

And HOPE is right beside it. We have to believe there is hope for the future. We have to HOPE that we aren’t all tied up in Plato’s dark cave, only seeing shadows, not the real things.

A scientist HOPES his theory is correct. A singer HOPES her audience likes her song. A songwriter, HOPES his lyrics ring true.

Every artist who sits down to his work begins the hero’s journey. Every time. Over and over. He leaves his comfortable ground to set out, not knowing what pitfalls will befall him. He or she HOPES they live to reach their destination, and they HOPE they have something to offer the tribe. 

The writer-artist doesn’t write to impart wisdom; he writes to find himself, and through that self-discovery, he HOPES to motivate others to do the same.

Who was it, Issac Asimov, who said “I write to find out what I am thinking?” Maybe it was Joan Didion who wrote a book with that title.

That is something my friend, the psychiatrist, did not understand, for if you follow Natalie Goldberg’s way of thinking that writing is a therapeutic experience, it might put him out of business.

Then there is old procrastination (Steven Pressfield calls it resistance) in finding something else to do besides THE WORK. THE WORK (your artistry) is scary, that’s the reason we put it off.

Hemingway said writing was opening a vein.

Liz Gilbert said to enjoy your creativity.

I enjoy writing. While writing, I am in the flow, and time is a no-thing. My demons aren’t as scary to me as Hemingway’s was to him. Or maybe he thought one must suffer for their craft. Published writers have an additional problem; they want to match or exceed their earliest work, which burdens them.

Steven Pressfield found that once he declared himself a writer (found his calling) and he sat down at the typewriter, typed out a few pages he later threw away—he was freed.  A few minutes later he was at the sink washing 10 days of stacked up dishes—and humming.

Suffering comes in the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

While hunting for a different picture I had recently placed in my files, I found this one.

P.S. Hey, it looks like I got my follow button back. How about a follow?

 

 

Ice Dec 23 outside the front door. The driveway is lethal. 

Pink, our pink flamingo in the arbor. Pink was last year's Christmas present from Daughter number 2 to me.The pink flamingo is our mascot for our Real Estate Brokerage which is called Vibrance Real Estate LLC. Oh, his little leg is drooping, but then, he's tired after holding it up for a year.

 

Resistance is the block that comes when you avoid something or bump into a wall. Steven Pressfield uses the word Resistance. I thought he was talking about Procrastination, but that’s not quite it.

 

Pressfield said that for years he had been avoiding his true calling. That was writing. However, finally, he sat down at his typewriter and wrote for an hour. “It was crap,” he said, but he got up and immediately washed the dishes that had been accumulating in the sink for a week. He had broken his resistance.

 

Let’s say you dream of starting a business. It’s a beautiful dream. You focus and plan, and it’s a fun adventure—the dreaming part. And then your business manifests. You have a business to set up, but now there is much to do. You have fees and dues and worry about how much it will cost. You have people to speak with and to hire. You need to market and get together materials. You become a doer. And you push and struggle, and it isn’t fun anymore. You say, “Well, it isn’t all fun, and it is necessary to work. And so, you push, you stay up nights, and that business occupies most of your waking hours.

 

Abraham, a teacher I listen to, says, “You have turned upstream.”

 

The dream, the planning, was downstream. You were going with the flow, and then you got into a struggle and turned upstream where the water was tumultuous, and rowing was tough.

 

But that’s the way it is, you say. It’s not all fun and games. It is necessary to do the work. Yep, that’s what schools, parents, and society teach us. 

 

And Boy, Howdy, that belief in hard work is hard to give up. There are monuments for people who have struggled, which tells us those people were important.

 

I’m not saying that overcoming a challenge isn’t satisfying. However, I agree with Abraham, who said, “Nothing you want is upstream.” (I think that College degree was. I wanted it. I did it. It was upstream.” I wonder, though, if there is a way to go with the flow while entangled in a system set up to make it hard?) 

 

That business analogy isn’t exactly my situation, but there is a ring of truth to it. I have struggled for the past month and got a simple website for our Real Estate Brokerage —that was the easy part. However, I’m still dealing with transferring domains, and with two people’s emails involved, and codes and all that. I think I got caught in a whirlpool.

 

It happens.

 

A few days ago, I picked up Aldous Huxley’s book, The Art of Seeing. Perhaps you remember I blogged about Vision Training in the blog post, Hello Beautiful, Check Your Eyeballs. Huxley commented that the eyes and the brain both like relaxation. 

 

The harder you scrunch down your brain, you try to remember something that has slipped away or find a lost object.

 

But eventually, you surrender. You let the severe concentration go—especially the anger at yourself for having lost or forgotten something. And, you sort of forget about it. You’ve turned downstream, and Viola’, it appears.

 

The eyes, like the brain, operate better when relaxed. You can feel it when you finally let go and allow the eyes to see and the brain to think.

 

There is much to learn in this life. I need to live another 1,000 years.

 

Wait, another 1,000? I haven’t lived the first 1,000 yet.

Take the Leap

“The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap from the rim of the bucket.” –Steven Pressfield

Have you ever decided to start a diet or spiritual practice, maybe you would like to sponsor a child in some far-off land, or perhaps you wanted to run for office. Maybe you wanted to get married, have a child, or campaign for world peace.

You didn't do it, or else the whole idea quickly drifted away.

Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter that doesn't paint, or an entrepreneur who doesn't begin a venture?

Then you know what Resistance is.

Resistance is a word I got the word “resistance” from Steven Pressfield's book The War of Art.

It means not doing the work you were meant to do.

Did you know that Hitler wanted to be an artist? So at eighteen, he took his inheritance and applied to the Academy of fine arts and later to the School of Architecture. Pressfield asked if we had ever seen any of his drawings. And then commented, and this was a stretch, he said, "but it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than to face a blank canvas."

Actually, Hitler was ravished by defeat. He flunked out of high school and both entrance exams to the art schools he wanted. He was selfish, egotistic, and lazy and would not take any criticism, and this man rose to prominence. You figure.

Many people have been told they have no talent, would never make it, and said, "They're nuts," and went on to do what they wanted.

Pressfield's point is you do your work anyway—even if it's terrible. You show up. You put your butt on the chair.

Resistance hits any health regime, spiritual advancement, diet, any calling in writing, music, education, or political movement.

The awakening person must be ruthless with themselves and with others who sabotage their efforts.

Do you know how often "The starving artist" has been played? Me neither.

Procrastination? Well, what can I say? You know about that. There are always distractions. Ill health, getting into trouble, soap operas—nothing like dad getting drunk, mom getting sick, and junior showing up with a swastika tattoo to set a family spinning out of control.

Do we believe in freedom, affluence, stability, and enough resources to permit the luxury of self-examination? Do we think that the world is advancing, however haltingly, toward a better world?

Or do we view humanity as fallen from a higher state? Do we believe in a philosophy of powerlessness? Do we need a doctrine to tell us what to do rather than decide for ourselves?

I woke up this morning humming, "We're simply soldiers in petticoats." Remember Mrs. Banks in the movie Mary Poppins? The original Mary Poppins was released in 1964. That was 56 years ago! I saw the movie with my mother and little sister, and my mother didn't quite get the laughing on the ceiling scene. What a shot. Ed Wynn was perfect.

"Although we adore men individually, as a rule, they're rather stupid." See what Mrs. Banks could get away with.

That is art.

Don't be insulted, men. We adore you individually, but as a rule, we've had some pretty stupid men circling the globe recently.

Some people might think of Mary Poppins as a frivolous child's movie, but think of this, Mrs. Banks was a suffragette. The Fiduciary Bank, where Mr. Banks worked, was greedy and controlling. The altruistic little boy, Michael, wanted to feed the birds with his tuppence. The parents were distracted and shuffled their children off to a nanny.

I hope I didn't use too many song lyrics from *" Sister Suffragette" by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. My publisher says that a song company can make you shred your book if you use too many song lyrics.

Don't shred my blog.

Song titles are okay.

Okay, I go to the computer to do "my work:"

But first, RESISTANCE! I check my email. *

Hey, one of you might have sent me something grand.

This popped up:
"$500.00 off coupon for a coaching course to make me beautiful.
"Enrol here," they said.

Doesn't enroll have two L's?

Ha ha. Don't get too serious.

*"Our daughter's daughters will adore us…."

A bit of trivia; In the Walt Disney World in the lost and found, there is a wooden leg with the word "Smith" on it.

                                                              
*“Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.” Anon

Promoting

 “Well Crap!”

 

“The job of promoting you lies with you, nobody else.”

--Jeff Herman

 

I’m terrible at promoting, or maybe just lazy. Writing is what I do. Selling? I don’t want to do it. (Even if I’m not charging.) It’s promoting the thing you hold dear.

 

I am grateful that you guys found me and are reading this blog. Actually, I don’t know how you found me, except that a damn writing blog sounds like a good idea. Maybe somebody has my back. 

 

If you are a writer, I congratulate you for putting your feelings on the line. I commend you for being willing to say what you want, when you want, in what manner you want. Maybe nobody will read it, but you did. You got it out. It’s your expression. Promoting is exposing your baby.

 

No wonder we writers don’t want to do it. 

 

It’s introducing your baby, when my response might be, “Yea, it’s a baby all right.”

 

Gosh, I thought she was beautiful.

 

Promoting, putting your work out there, telling people about it, advertising? Steven Pressfield would say I have RESISTANCE, sometimes called procrastination, which he writes about a lot.

 

It was fascinating, though, when he was in limbo, depressed, had no direction or inclination to have one, that the one thing that got it out of his slump was to write. After sitting down at the typewriter and writing, he went to the sink and happily washed the dishes.

 

He had broken through. 

 

Natalie Goldberg was one of the first people to say that writing was a healing endeavor. Now, it’s all over the place; journal to get your feeling out. Pressfield said that first writing was crap. But it was his crap, and it burst the damn of his resistance.

 

Some people write good stuff yet don’t like the process. I always wondered about that. I’ve been watching a cooking competition show out of Australia called '"My kitchen Rules," and the judges can tell when there is love on the plate. When the cooking team of two is stressed out, or squabbling in the kitchen, the judges say it shows on the plate. (They are under a time crunch, which adds to the pressure--create a gourmet meal, and do it fast.)

 

Wouldn’t a page written with love have the same effect?

 

What about writing that is unhappily squeezed out? Wouldn’t that show as well?

 

But then maybe the page finds its audience. You know, different strokes for different folks.

 

Oh, writing’s a business? I thought it was play.

 

 

Just Write the Damn Thing

Steven Pressfield writes a lot about Resistance, sometimes called procrastination.

When Pressfield got back from Israel after conducting interviews for the film The Lion’s Gate, he had almost five hundred hours of tape from about eighty interviewees—soldiers, tankers, and airmen who had fought in the Six Day War of 1967.

He wanted to be accurate, he wanted to give justice to the men who fought. And he found he was loitering.

He said all he saw was confusion. I kept waiting for the picture to come into focus. But it never did. I could’ve spent a year transcribing interviews and been just as uncertain as I was at the start.

Sometimes you have to fly straight into the chaos.

And as writers, sometimes you have to tell yourself, “Just write the damn thing!”