How to Write?

Find a sacred place, one that draws you to it with its beauty or smell, strong coffee or lively conversation. Some writers light candles, invoke angels, hold river stones, to give them the courage to open up one large artery and let blood pour, over the page, onto the table, through the door, into the lake.

A woman told me, "After writing for many years, happy and bright things that I believed would draw people closer to me but didn't, the dark stories inside of me starting screaming to come out, 'We are here too, your monsters and demons, we want to be heard.' It was either let them out or stop writing. But I needed to write to stay alive. So I wrote about wanting to kill my husband, with the knife I carried around the kitchen to cut up eggplant, children snug in their beds. I was too tired to walk up the steps to do it so didn't kill him. But, I wanted to." She paused then looked into my eyes, "I read that to people I trusted and no one hated me. The writing drew them closer to me. And I felt free enough to fly."

I prefer the strong coffee, long wooden tables, jazz music places to write, where you can sit for hours nursing one strong brew and nobody will notice or care, where some of the same people come day after day to wrangle with words, ideas, theories, memories.

What is the story that you are compelled to write, that you can't put down, that pulls you over the edge like water falling? Who are the characters that come to you, unbidden, with their wounds exposed, their hair teased and bleached, their ignorance, and failed attempts at life, their unruly loves? How do they wrestle with the questions you can't stop asking even though know there are no answers?

One Wild and Precious Life

In her poem, "The Summer Day," Mary Oliver asks us to consider: "..what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Its a good question to consider but hard for me to do. Because, I keep forgetting that I have only one life. My mind tells me, "You can do that later, next time, once things settle down and you are more secure. You have other lives to live, this one is just practice."

My mind draws comfort from these these words "next time" and "later" convinced that what really matters has either already happened or is yet to come. But, in truth, as the sages have taught us, "next" and "later" don't really exist. All we have, for sure, is this moment. This present moment in which we breath in and out, where we feel the hard knot of loneliness, the baby's soft cheek.

Surprisingly, time is infinite in the present moment, spacious, forgiving, and kind. And when I am awake, it is where I find my one wild and precious life.

Father's Hands

Mother packed a new pair of boxers and a t-shirt to go under the dark wool suit. She wanted to bring dark socks but I insisted on the white cotton socks that he preferred later in life. N. brought a light blue shirt to go under the suit and A. picked out a dusk blue tie with narrow black stripes.

The night my father died a woman from the organ bank called our house. I answer the phone. She asked me if we might want to donate father's legs and arms to help children born with cleft palettes. "The bones and tissues would help children to live normally, heal them," the woman from the organ bank continued through my silence. "We would put in prosthetics. He could still have an open casket."

My first thought was that this sounded like a good idea, that in his death he could help others to live better. It is only a body now, I reasoned, he is not "in it" anymore, there is nothing left he needs from those skin and bones.

But, we had picked out such a beautiful suit for him to wear. And whether or not we could actually see the legs, I wouldn't be able to stop thinking of them cut from him on ice in a plastic bucket. And my stinginess made me feel small and brittle. "No," I told the woman from the organ bank,"This is not something we are interested in doing."

At the funeral home the next day, we saw father laying in the brown glossy casket his head "resting" on a white pillow. It didn't look much like him, though, unless you focused in on a single eyebrow or one of the age spots on his large hands. I would have missed seeing his hands one more time, the oversize thick fingers folded together and resting over his belly, the rosary draped around the knuckles. They were cold now, though, and yellow not like in the hospital when he seemed to squeeze just a little tighter if you asked loud enough.

How will I find happiness if I don't seek it?

Adyashaniti writes, "The old Zen Master knew that seeking happiness (or truth, or reality or fill in the blank), is as silly as a dog thinking that it must chase its tail in order to attain its tail. The dog already has full possession of its tail from the very beginning. Besides, once the dog grasps his tail, he will have to let go of it in order to function."

If I possess, already, what I yearn for - love, acceptance, serenity, gracefulness, health, (a seemingly endless list if I am truthful) - why do these things often feel out of reach? My mind rebels against such ridiculousness as the dog story and tells me, "Surely, you will be much happier if you (and you can again fill in your own blank), had "enough" money, practiced more yoga, ate more organic vegetables, gave more to charity, traveled, were more successful in your work." My mind is convinced it can protect me from suffering, pain, illness, loss, boredom, fear, failing.

But, the mind is not to be trusted. That is what the Zen Masters teach us. The mind longs, yearns, pesters you for your slouth. "If only you worked harder, did this with more devotion...then you could be happy." The mind is an unruly monkey.

The Buddhists tell us, then, to watch the mind but not let it lead you astray into that place of "not enoughness". In the present moment, we already embody in the all that is. Watch the mind, quietly, and then see if you can surrender your thoughts to the heart which provides all that you require and can show you the way.