from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Wednesday 7 September 2011

the layers of ourselves

There are many places I go if I need inspiration. Some of them – many of them – are actual outdoors places. And many of them are inner places: other people's hearts, thoughts, dreams, imaginings (and also of course my own).

One long-term inspiratrice of mine is writer and Zen practitioner Natalie Goldberg. If you are a writer and don't know her books on writing you're missing a treat.

Here's this morning's dipping: 'Style in writing is not something glib–oh, yeah, she has style.It means becoming more and more present, settling deeper and deeper inside the layers of ourselves and then speaking, knowing what we write echoes all of us; all of who we are is backing our writing. Hemingway said if a writer knows something, even if he doesn't write it, it is present in his work.'

(from Wild Mind)

2 comments:

  1. Wild Mind is the one I like best of hers, I think. She seems to be most concentratedly herself in the speaking.

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  2. Thanks Andie - yes me too, just; I also love Writing Down the Bones, though, and have you read 'Long Quiet Highway - waking up in America'? More autobiographical, and to do with just that - waking up.

    Rx

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