shit grows things

"mastery does not come from dabbling. we have to be prepared to pay the price. we need to have the sustained enthusiasm that motivates us to give our best." -- e'knath easwaran

sometimes the writing comes easy, you're just taking dictation. your mind relaxes like your eyes do when you gaze off into space daydreaming. you just have to show up & the feeling in your belly (fire? hunger? whatever you personally call it) drives this writing; you just have to keep your fingers moving & the thing writes itself. when it's finished (and it does tell you it's finished, you don't have to ask or wonder) you wake up out of savasana, refreshed and eager to read what all went on.

sometimes you feel as if you have to put on your miner's hat with the light and delve into that closet of feelings...such a nice door on that closet, good and sturdy. this writing takes awhile, after you make it through the pile of stuff on the floor, and down through the secret door under the closet, you still have that labrynth in the cellar to explore. you should set aside days, uninterrupted for this writing. and bring tissues. for the dust.

the worst (or best, most cathartic--like running a marathon; you finish & you're sweaty & contentedly exhausted) is the hairshirt writing. you have found your hairshirt in the back of that damn closet & just for kicks, you try it on to see if it still fits. you haven't had it on since you gave up torturing yourself a few years back--and yep, it still fits. light some candles, cue up the sad music & put that sucker on. this is the heavy monster writing that will either end up genius or crap, depending on if you've also had wine and, too, depending on how you handle wine. set aside days for recovery from hairshirt writing.

it doesn't have to be complicated and it doesn't have to be good. my goal is to write because, quite simply, writing begets writing. i mean, even if it's shitty crap...a basic law of the universe states that shit grows things. thich nhat hanh put it better: the lotus can grow only from the mud. garbage = flowers.

so...write. create. teach. SOMEthing. xo


"if your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you're not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place." -- rilke

"objectivity, and again objectivity and expression: no hindside-before-ness, no straddled adjectives (as "addled mosses dank"), no tennysonianness of speech; nothing--nothing that you couldn't, in some circumstance in the stress of some emotion, actually say." --ezra pound