Commitment

There are things I used used to write, before I became wooed by the novel, not the novel in the sense of the new, the unexplored, but the novel as a long complete work of fiction, a story told from beginning to end, with characters and  plot and conflict-- description, tension, a theme.  Inside the novel are pieces of me, dressed up in characters and scenes, but the pieces I used to write were naked.  I miss writing this way.  It's late afternoon as I write this, approaching 5:33 ( 3:33 Boulder time) and I realize that I write the novel in the morning, and have convinced myself that no good writing happens at night.  But when I look back, I see that this is not exactly true.  For five good years I wrote my best pieces on Wednesday night in Bill Scheffel's basement, and while in the MFA program at Naropa I wrote in the evenings, at lunch time, in the morning, whenever.  I wrote to keep up.  I wrote to understand what was happening.

Here's the truth about me.  I'm not a quick study.  I get bored in the middle of the book and skip to the end. I forget the details but retain the feeling and the images.  Like a David Lynch movie, my mind translates data to a symphonic collage of sound, image, and symbol until a feeling emerges.  Then I write the feeling and somewhere in the process the truth reveals itself and I understand.  This is a good process for writing fiction, but I'm kind of a dud in discussion groups and classrooms.

I feel like a smart, useful person until I try to verbalize my thoughts and hear the crazy words that tumble out.  I used to imagine a tiny man in the center of my heart, bound and gagged, waiting for me to arrive and untie him.  At the moment of his liberation my heart, I imagined, would articulate all the wisdom and compassion that I possess but have not had access to, and be filled with the joyful bliss that just needed uncovering, and I'd enjoy all the orgasms I've faked, a speedy metabolism, and healthy gums.  I would be able to speak my mind.

At some point I forgot about the little man, but yesterday I heard him rattling his chains.  As I read a letter from Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche I felt a humming in my solar plexus.  What is your commitment to practice and study, the Sakyong asked?  What will you offer?  Unbidden, the answer came. Intimacy.

Intimacy, says the little voice, and it is never wrong.  For the last few years I have committed myself to the practice that has benefitted me the most, the one that always brings clarity and insight, the one that turns up the volume on the world's brilliant music.  When I attend to this practice I feel right.  When I don't, I get hostile.  Writing is the practice that has allowed me best to know my mind.   Intimacy is a practice of sharing openly, of holding nothing back.

So, in that spirit,  I will write something here everyday.   I invite you to stop by once in awhile.