The Green Wave

January 24, 2010

Piggybacking

Filed under: People, Poetry, Spirit, Writing — kate @ 2:34 pm

There are a million great reasons to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on our creative projects.  Here are just a few:

  • the excitement of being busy and engaged
  • the excitement of turning an idea into a creation we can share
  • the excitement of being artists who regularly make art (on this point, my dear friend Lauren Passarelli has written an an inspiring, helpful, and generous essay on her blog, Pass Words; don’t miss it!)
  • the excitement of seeing our body of work grow and change over time
  • the fantastic feeling of flow and power that comes with making things!  (doesn’t matter if it’s a book or a Zentangle:  just making something produces great satisfaction and pleasure in me)

Today I’d like to highlight another reason – one I think of as  Piggybacking.

By this I mean that sometimes, creating one thing greases the gears so powerfully that another creation follows close on the heels of the first.  And often that second creation comes with very little effort or struggle – a benediction after hours of fasting & praying.

I first noticed this when I was writing my dissertation and found that after a good work session, I was often so charged with a poem idea that the need to write it down felt as urgent as the need to drink when you’re thirsty (or visit the loo afterwards!).  At the time, I thought of the dissertation-writing as “throwing off sparks.”

I’ve noticed it, too, when I sit down to write poems for an “assignment” – usually an agreed-upon topic with Cheryl Perreault, my Friday morning poetry partner.  I might start in a cheerful but dutiful way and find that the first poem is fine but that the second poem shows up unbidden on the winds of real inspiration.  This phenomenon I think of as “stirring up the mud.”

(These little aphorisms sound like katas in some ancient Asian martial art:  “First, perform “stirring up mud” and then leap straight into “throwing off sparks.”  Then you are the Master!”)

This week I took on a new writing task:  fashioning an artist bio for my friend, marvelous singer-songwriter Nancy Beaudette.  I worked for hours on this project and found that every part of my brain was engaged and excited.  Getting the tone and shape right was a little like working at a puzzle, and as I sharpened and brightened the piece, I felt tremendous satisfaction.  When I finished, I could have turned cartwheels!

At the same time, I thought that was enough work for the day, and I decided to give up the evening to a well-earned rest.

But out of nowhere came the thought that I could write an introduction to my new book of poems if I’d just sit back down and try, that I had not only all the information I needed but also all the inspiration.  I didn’t think or worry or assent consciously but obeyed the impulse.

Less than an hour later there was the introduction – a completed project I’d been thinking about for 3 weeks!

If I hadn’t worked so hard and so pleasurably on Nancy’s bio, I don’t think that would have happened.  I would probably be still thinking about the introduction and assuming I needed to do research and thinking before digging into it.

Instead, I went to bed feeling like a busy, excited, productive writer!

Try it yourself with any of your projects.  Do some Piggyback Writing, some Piggyback Painting, some Piggyback Jewelry-Making, some Piggyback Cooking, some Piggyback Dancing, some Piggyback Photography!  Anything at all.  We’ve all heard Goethe’s brilliant words, but they bear repeating again and again and again and again:

“Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”

(He probably came up with that bit of timeless insight after writing a business letter.  Early 19th century Piggybacking!)

January 14, 2010

Tracks

Filed under: People, Pleasures, Spirit — kate @ 2:15 pm

On Sunday, I rose early to go with my friends Kathleen and Craig to the Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge for an introduction to the basics of tracking.  We had the great good fortune to land in the group led by Rona Balco, an inspiring teacher and experienced outdoorswoman.  Let me put it this way:  while most of us tromp down the path, perhaps noticing the warmth of the sun on our shoulders and commenting on the odd birch tree, Rona reads the natural world the way an English professor reads Ulysses.  It is a huge sounding board of intricate signs and signals, replete with tales and tragedies, good characters and savages, hard luck and fortunate moonlight.  She is a native speaker of the woods – or at least she has become so fluent in nature that she passes as a native.

In her company I began to sense the possibilities for interpretation, the many clues to read and wonder over, all played out on the vast canvas of the snow.  Thank heaven for the snow!  For without it, a complete newbie like myself would have a much harder time even seeing the signs, much less understanding them.  Rona told us that in deducing the story behind the signs, you have to take everything into account:  time, habit, preference, ability, environment.  When the tracks end, as they do many times, you look a little ways off and realize that the creature has traveled for a time under the snow where it is warmer and safer.  (We do this, too, of course; the tracks of our lives disappear briefly when we go under the snow for safety and respite).

I came away with deeper respect for the wisdom of the creatures who really are the First Peoples of this planet:  for the beavers who teach their one-year-olds to build dams but who are willing to accept these youngsters back if things don’t work out in the wide world; for the coyotes who trot in tandem over the ice and work as a hunting team; for the deer that sniff out hunters and take themselves without further ado into safer territory, like people without drama leaving a mean party; for the trees themselves that pass along word of changes or dangers through chemical signals in the soil.  Through Rona’s eyes, I saw an intricate web singing with vitality, cleverness, generosity, bravery, instinct, adaptability, and wisdom.

Rona herself is leaving such beautiful tracks.  She is a consummate teacher – passionate, patient, eager to see us all learn and love what she loves – and she is also an advocate for better communities, for better stewardship of the earth through wiser use of resources, and for the Oxbow, which seems to be her dearest dear.  She is also a woodcarver, a mother and wife, and a wonderful friend to the people in her town.

If we followed her tracks we might see them disappear at the edge of the river and wonder where she went.  But we could use all she taught us to deduce the real story:  this is where she took to the wing.  What a life and gracious, what lovely tracks!

January 3, 2010

My Friends, the Writers

Filed under: Pleasures, Writing — kate @ 4:42 pm

There are times in my reading life when I crave challenge, risk, edginess, and the kind of confrontation that shakes up the status quo.

This is not one of them.

Lately, I turn to my books as to the faces of beloved friends. I open them up in hopes of finding not a tongue-lashing but a comforting chat with a trusted confidante. The tone I’m after is conversational, confiding, kind, and interested in the world. There is something leisurely and good-humored about their prose; yes, they see problems and questions, but rather than screech, they’d rather pour a second cup of tea and imagine their way to a better world. They know that there is as much meaning and interest in a shoe-lace as there is in a political summit. They are prepared to ruminate on the difference between daisies and lilies, but they’d be ready to listen if you put in a word for roses.

In short, I love their company. In time, they come to seem like friends to me.

Here is a partial list of friends:

  • J.B. Priestley -  When I finished my first reading of Delight, Priestley’s collection of essays about dozens of pleasing things such as pine forests and reading detective fiction in bed, I wrote in my journal that I had met a new friend.  I never wanted to be out of his company nor lose his particular way of seeing the world.  Now the book – formerly a library copy – sits by my bed.
  • Anne Fadiman – In At Large & At Small, Fadiman writes what she calls “familiar essays,” and by that she means both essays about familiar, ordinary things (coffee, ice cream, and mailboxes among other things) and also the sense of family and relationship.  Her curiosity knows no bounds.  In her company we travel from the world of insect-collecting to the world of Charles & Mary Lamb.  She wears her knowledge so lightly you scarcely realize how much you are learning -but learning you are, and not just facts, either:  a way of taking a deeper and livelier interest in the world.  She feels to me like a kindred spirit.
  • Charles Dickens – I wrote about him in my last post, “Scrooge & Me,” and my experience of his writing is fairly limited to the “greatest hits” (Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol), but I will amend that gap now that his good humor and humanity have impressed themselves upon me.  He is that person at the party who seems at first quite ordinary and later is revealed as the most extraordinary person in the room.
  • Robertson Davies – Pick up anything by this Canadian writer for broad-minded, intelligent company, but if you like essays, get Happy Alchemy, his book about music and the theatre, two of his life-long passions.  And for sheer delight, check out his book of academic ghost stories set at Massey College in Toronto, High Spirits.  Great laughs!
  • M.F.K. Fisher – Fisher writes about food, but not just about food:  food as a metaphor for the way we take in life, how we digest experiences, how we dine on relationships or abstain all together.  Her essays tell us about the pleasures of eating alone (she seems to favor an omelet, a green salad, and a glass of wine – OR she’ll go for something messy and forbidden), about the feeling of extreme hunger in youth and how older people forget what it is to be ravenous (for life, of course!), and even about the various sinks and kitchens in flats she rented throughout Europe.  You can start anywhere with her, I think – her early books about cooking and eating (Serve it Forth or How To Cook a Wolf), or later books of essays like Sister Age, or dip into her journals and letters.  She’s honest, unflinching, friendly without being saccharine, and wise.  Another friend I’m glad to know.

This is just a tasting plate, and I’m sure you have your own list; if so, I’d love to meet your friends!  Happily, all it takes to access their company is to open their books.  So tonight I’m throwing a dinner party and inviting all of these and others (the poets and novelists who belong at the table, too).  I hope MFK won’t judge my cooking too harshly – but since we’re friends, I think she’ll be gentle with me.  And besides, we’ll be dining on words, words, words, with whimsy for dessert!

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