Thursdays at The Variegated Life: on the creative life and shipping the goodies …
At the end of the Heart Sutra, we chant the Prajna Paramita mantra: Gate! Gate! Paragate! Parasamgate! Bodhi Svaha! There was a time when these wild words were a great comfort to me: Gone! Gone! Beyond gone! Far beyond gone! Awake, it is so! I was in the midst of my second episode of depression then; it was also when I seriously took up Zen practice. It was comforting to know that there is nothing I can grasp, not even my own depression.
And now? I do not like January, and I do not like snow. We are trying to conceive, and we are failing. And yet I’m mostly happy. In the oblique light of the winter sun, the sky is a different kind of gorgeous every day. And we have a little Critter, changing and growing from moment to moment. “Baa-Baa time” is now, and it’s not going to last forever.
I was going to post something else today, but I didn’t have the time to write it. Time: it just might be the only theme to my poetry. Never enough; where does it go? Or maybe time and love are my themes. And questions. I write to make art out of that which cannot be grasped….
Here’s an old poem, written long before my motherhood.
WHAT I MEAN
Even in my sleep, I’m always
packing bags and rushing
to catch the next train.I never know
where I’m going, only
that I have to get there, and
there’s never enough
time; I havetoo much stuff, and nothing
fits in these bags, already too heavy
for the long distance I’m going.My dreams say time
when I mean love.I mean to love them more:
the worn straps of my bags
and my shoulders;the tree-lined streets
on the way to the station, and the shops
selling coffee, lottery tickets, and bruised fruit;the dun-colored sparrows that scatter
from the sidewalk as I go.If I could be still, would they come to me;
would they let me hold
their small bodies, fat from their diet of seeds?
Why do you write, or make whatever you make?
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I love your poem Rachael, I love the simple and beautiful truth of it and the lovely way your words flow.
I wish you tremendous good fortune in conceiving.
6512 and growing recently posted… Homestead happenings- home!
Thank you.
Oh – and I write because of this weird narrative in my head (that often sounds better in my head than on the page or screen) that natters on all day.
Also, my kids are tremendous creative inspiration .
6512 and growing recently posted… Homestead happenings- home!
Since getting pregnant with the Critter, motherhood has been just about the only thing I’ve written about. But I’ve exhausted my current approach to the topic, and so I’ve been flailing around for the past few months, trying to find my way to the next big subject — or my next take on the subject of motherhood. But yes, I too have found that my little one is tremendous creative inspiration!
I had a dream once (or a daydream, I can’t remember or tell the difference now,) of myself, suitcase in hand, standing forlornly by the side of a deserted highway while I drove off in a fast car. I didn’t have to think too hard to see the symbolism in that one. To me, depression feels like abandoning myself at the side of the road, and I think happiness is possible in many difficult situations as long as you haven’t abandoned yourself. Writing and creating is one way I say to myself, “my ideas are worth my time and effort.”
Beautiful poem. Where can I read more of them?
I’ll probably share a few more old poems here from time to time. And you can see a reading that I gave a year ago at the KGB Bar on YouTube. And I have my first publication coming out this summer, in the journal RATTLE. And I have to send out more work soon — after I meet my January deadlines!
Your dream of the divided self is so evocative.
Just typing a note to say “hello”… I just found your blog and am enjoying it.
Your poem is beautiful.
I write because I am fearful of forgetting. I have an urge to record every single experience of being a mother, and, now, of being a working mother. I also write because it helps me to compartmentalize the thoughts that would otherwise overwhelm me during my day. Writing brings me great mental and emotional relief.
Of course I only write on my blog…
Why do I do science (which is my real occupation)? I do science because I stumbled onto it and happen to be good at it, because I need to be intellectually challenged during my day. That’s the path I’ve been following for a long time, so I might as well keep going.
Rachael recently posted… Inevitability
Hello, Rachael with an a!
I, too, fear forgetting. When I was in college, Richard Selzer gave a lecture to one of my writing classes, in which he recommended keeping a journal as a way of keeping your life in words.
I used to write regularly, now it’s much more sporadic and much more for myself. I write- or embark on other creative type projects- because it is the only thing that quiets this whirlwind, ants-in-my-pants, all consuming, restlessness that descends on me from time to time. Nothing is right, nothing is enough, I feel like I should be going or doing or moving or somewhere else that has no name. And then I write, or make a collage, or draw, or glue random bits of things together, and it recedes, and then I’m done.
He meant it in an entirely different way, but one of my favorite qoutes is from George Bernard Shaw: “vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation”. That’s how it feels. And when I’m done, I feel like I ate a really big fabulous feast, or had great sex, or something.
I study biopsych because the topics coming under that heading getting me revved up into the kind of frenzy that gives rise to my creativity.
Great post.
I love your poem!
mumsyjr recently posted… Snowed In
The urgency of your whirlwind reminds me of a feeling I had as a little girl, when I saw something beautiful (like the trees today! covered in snow!). The trees or the mountains or the oceans seemed to be urging me — do something! do something! do something about us! Which I interpreted as the need to make art.
It took us quite some time to conceive our second child. It was not awful, but it was a roller coaster. Up and down, every month. I like to think it all worked out as it was supposed to, somehow it makes me feel better.
As for me, I write because I love it, and it gives me a way to express myself that nothing else does. I feel most like myself when I get into a flow state while I’m writing.
Amber recently posted… Paige Rohrick- Life-Crafter
I write in such fits and starts that the flow state is hard to find. But when I’m there, I know that what I’m writing is true.
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