Composting

When I first read this, I thought it said "Composing," but no :)
"Our senses by themselves are dumb" (14). Oh so true. This passage is about the waiting that writers must do. Betsy talks about a similar situation in yoga all the time. In any/everything people do, practice must happen for a skill, essay, or poem to shine through. We cannot, as Goldberg states, write about something as we are going through it. We must do so after we have some distance.

Of course there are paths, right? Like when my mom was slipping away, I was furiously scribbling about every intense feeling I had. Everything I thought and felt and wanted to scream and wanted to say poured into a hot pink notebook. For two weeks I laid on a hospital bed and talked to my mom through my notebook. At the time, I never thought I would survive or be able to do anything except think about it and about her.

Yet, here I am, and since she died I've forgotten many things I initially wrote about. I had to compost about her cancer for a few weeks, but wound up with a polished piece, but I haven't done anything with it. Perhaps that will come later as well.
There are many things about her that I haven't written about. Many things that have happened to me that I haven't written about or processed yet.
In yoga, Betsy says that I may work on shoulder balance for a lifetime before I master it. Many poses will never be entirely mastered. Many topics will never be entirely mastered. I imagine I will continue to miss my mother until I die myself. Some days less, and some days more. Maybe some days not at all. But, it is impossible to completely let go of something that shaped my core.

I imagine teaching will also be a thread I continue discussing, and as much as Barrie and Witt hate it, I will probably write about writing--at least while I'm looking at Goldberg, anyway :)
Raking through the surface level junk to get to the rich soil ready to blossom beneath. Just like everything worth practicing.

Writing as a Practice

"If every time you sat down, you expected something great, writing would always be a disappointment" (11).

Isn't that all of life? Yesterday on Facebook, I saw Camille was on, and I tried to strike up a conversation with her. Last year was so hard on her. She lost her father not too long ago to brain cancer, she was living in Kentucky, but she want to move back to Colorado badly. I had lost touch with her when my mom died, and I finally left home and grew up. I remember when my mom was gone, I had called Camille, and I expected her to come to mom's funeral, or send me a card. That expectation was unfulfilled. She pretty much ignored me.

I remember talking with her mom and her mom saying, "Camille really needs you, she's just not paying attention right now. You need to stick with her." At the time I wasn't strong enough to stick to anything. I was struggling to figure out what to do with my whole life. I couldn't support my friends who lived near me, much less friends who lived in Kentucky.

The whole time Camille's been married--even before that, she's been wanting a baby--many babies. And she can't conceive. In February or March of last year, she finally got pregnant, but she went into labor and lost the baby in June. I know her heart broke. I can't imagine.

So, yesterday, I saw her on Facebook, and I tried to initiate a conversation with her and asked her how she was. She seemed so sad. And, I know she has good reason to be, but I can't imagine her life right now. I wonder if she laughs and smiles. I wonder if she has fun and has friends.

I hate to think of someone I was so close to, being so depressed.

I hope this year is a hopeful one for her. I hope we can reconnect and be closer, but I'm not sure it will happen. I wonder if happiness is something that we have to practice. Do we have to be in the right mindset to be happy? Is joy something that must happen spontaneously, or can we search for it? Does laughter have something to do with the faith that we have in our core that convinces us that life is wonderfull?

First Thoughts

Rules for writing:

1.) Keep your hand writing

2.) Don't cross out (don't delete)

3.) Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar

4.) Lose control

5.) Don't think. Don't get logical

6.) Go for the jugular

It's hard to just write without thinking about all the things that "writers" are supposed to think about. Hitting the delete or backspace button is second nature, and has happened about twenty times since I first started working on this post. I'm finally at a point where I see editing as important, so I probably shouldn't give it up.

The rest of them seem possible. Logic has never been an issue :)

When trying to figure out direction for this, Witt kept coming back to the idea of what people are supposed to get out of this, but I don't think others will really read this. Blogging now is so common place, that even if I do link this to my Facebook and Twitter the only people who will definitely stay up with it already know everything about me. So, this blog is more a practice of self indulgence than teaching. Maybe I teach enough already, and this can just be about me or what I think.

This weekend I watched Julie and Julia. It was such a beautiful movie. I loved both stories, and of course thought of a the movie that would accompany my blog: Natalie and Leslie ;)

I'm pretty sure, though, that Natalie would like my blog better than Julia liked Julie's (isn't that humble of me!)

Beginner's Mind, Pen, and Paper

Experiment, Goldberg commands, with different writing utensils--pens, papers, notebooks, etc.

I love typing on Mac. I love his little keys and how the shell of the laptop feels cool against my skin. I go back to pen and paper, though. I'm not sure if I will ever stop liking the way a good pen feels in my hand.

Experimenting is so fun in theory, but in real life it's hard for me to experiment with much more besides food and music. Maybe I need to experiment more.

The BiG Review of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Last night before Witt and I left for Krissy's wedding in Fayetteville, we stopped by Patton Alley Pub. Witt was going to run in for a minute, have a drink, and we were going to drive. I had to get gas, and then pick him up. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, tops. Instead it took nearly two hours, and during that two hours I read Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days between trips around the block. Greg endures a summer of fighting with Rowley, getting and losing his first two pets, a scary movie, a memorable trip to the beach, several trips to the public pool, being blacklisted a country club, and a family birthday party. Funny, funny stuff.

View all my reviews >>

Introduction

"To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life" (3).
The last line of this introduction is to "use this book," and so I will. I've always shied away from writing in this or in anything online every day. What if someone reads it? What if no one reads it. The reality is that the area is here whether I use it or not.

The idea of ultimately dealing with my whole life is at once exciting and terrifying. Of course it won't happen all at once and maybe not at all. But maybe I owe it to myself to try.

And so, after trying to find a routine for this, I have decided that I will read (re-read) a vignette from Goldberg's two book volume: Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind and write something each day. Or when I remember or feel like it. I don't know that I can stick to this, but it will be an exercise.

Writing Down the Bones

The past few days I've been trying to read a mini-essay from the book Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and taking notes about things to write about. Lately I keep thinking about all of the things I need to do instead of doing them. There are four things I want to do each day for myself--read, write, walk, and yoga. Each of them for about twenty minutes (except the writing, which I feel like I can do in less time for some reason), and each of them make me feel better in all kinds of ways when I do them.

When I get up in the morning to do yoga, my head is clearer and I'm calmer. Serene, peaceful. Maybe this feeling of calmness is in my head, but even so, that still means it's real, right?

So, now, I have pages of lists in my notebook that may be translated to this blog or may just stay on the paper. When Goldberg first wrote The Bones she wrote exclusively about paper to pen or pencil, saying that pen to paper is nearly a spiritual process. I know that to be true--but I also wonder if hand to keyboard cannot also awaken the sleeping writer in us. My hands move faster when they type than when they write. So, does my brain move faster or am I trying to keep up?

On my sketchy list of things to write about is the line "our senses by themselves are too dumb" which of course is true. I walk around life trying to feel and remember every feeling and everything, but it is only when I step back that I realize my true thoughts about an issue or an idea or person.

There was a time when I believed that the feeling approach I took was the best or the only approach, but now i realize that it is a choice like most other choices we make about ourselves, even if it is an unconscious one.

Of course writing, and this book, and Natalie Goldberg make me think about Dr. Walker. When we went through her papers a few weeks ago and we found letter after letter of hers from Leslie and some other man. She write these love letters in ways that made me realize I didn't know her much at all. We were given a small slice of her life, and that slice was beautiful, but it was definitely not the only part of her. We were barely a part of her life, but we were there at the end, circled around her and holding her hands. Listening to her breaths move slowly and less rapidly from her body until she was dead. Barely knew her, yet held her as she took her last breath.