on writing (again)

i’m reading a book on meditative retreating. it’s called ‘silence, simplicity, and solitude,’ and i picked it up because it looks at extended meditational retreats from a few different religious perspectives (judaism, christianity, buddhism, islam, hinduism) and tries to find common aspects to them.

i ought to be ‘into’ meditation. i’m the target audience. spiritual without being tied to a religion. ‘earthy.’ ‘natural.’ ‘diy.’ ‘introspective.’ all that stuff that people who meditate are ‘supposed’ to be. but i just can’t seem to get myself into it. maybe it’s the fact that i like to be good at things immediately. i tend to stick only to thinks i have a knack for. this doesn’t always apply, but whatever ‘having a knack’ means, it happens often enough that i’m not terribly limited.

(yes, i was the annoying kid in school who could whiz through most things. sorry. believe me, it wasn’t the greatest place to be at the time.)

anyway. that’s why i thought for a long time that i wasn’t getting into meditation. but now, reading this book, i’m starting to wonder if it’s not so much that i can’t get into meditation as a whole as it is that a lot of my meditative energy goes into something else.

David Cooper writes in the book:
“Sitting still, alone, for long periods is very hard work. We encounter demons, anger, frustration, pain, anxiety, and yes, there can be hours when nothing seems to happen. People understand this side of the retreat better. When I say, ‘Oh, it was frustrating and boring,’ I see twinkles in their eyes. When I saw, ‘It was pure ecstasy,’ I see clouds of doubt arising.”

He talks about how people from all walks of life are attracted to meditation. He talks about how part of it is to benefit our lives as they are, but much of it is to calm some voice inside of us that says the everyday is not enough. He talks about how difficult it is to do it all alone, but that most of it must be alone. Yes, mentors can be helpful, but the work itself is done in solitude.

He talks about needing a guardian, someone who will keep the outside world out, make sure you have food and water and that the heat stays at a comfortable temperature. Someone who understands your need to be alone, who appreciates it.

I could keep going, but I’m going to stop and ask: what else, besides spiritual meditation, requires much of these things?

Creation. Creation as an act of meditation. I think primarily of writing, partially because it’s my creation of choice, and partially because it does function differently from many other acts. You can’t talk with someone else as you write the way you can when you’re painting or weaving or sculpting.

Here’s another reason I think of writers as different. (I apologize in advance – I found this conversation on someone’s blog years ago and didn’t record the site. If it’s yours, let me know! I’ll credit you. Because I think about it. )

“One night on the Lido Deck, where the faculty hang out, I was chatting with this nice young woman named Kathryn, and it turned out that she’s the assistant to the shrink who’s performing this study. I asked her how it was all going.
And a tale she wove.
The guy who’s running the study — whose name I can’t remember — wanted to understand creativity. Literally. He searched around and discovered CSSSA, then a very new program. CSSSA, Kathryn explained to me, is the densest, largest, most insular, most process-based intensive artistic training program in the world. Due to the age range, the lack of “final show,” the fact that the faculty is made up of professional artists, and how hard we work to create a buffer zone between the students and the outside world, it presents an opportunity to research artists unlike any other on the planet.
I didn’t understand any of that at the time. I asked if they discovered anything.
She smiled sheepishly and said, “We know that artists are different than most people.”
Beat. We both crack up.
She explained that there are “categories of difference” in perception of others, self, time, that sort of thing, as well as behavioral differences, sleeping patterns, basically every measurable facet of being human. And individuals who self-identify as artists are different than those who do not.
She got serious for a moment and said, “It really is kind of a discovery. There’s a strain of argument that says artists are just like everyone else. But we’re close to being satisfied that artists are as different from other people psychically as athletes are to other people physically.”
So I asked, “Was there anything surprising?”
“Well, we’re not done yet, there’ll be a book, but there was one thing.”
She looked at me. Narrowed her eyes.
“What discipline are you?”
“I’m a writer.”
She smiled. And I realized that I was being studied.
“I thought so. See, the one thing that surprised us is that in those categories of difference writers are more different than any other group of artists. That is to say, of all the measurable categories of difference, writers are more different than those who do not self-identify as artists than any other group. At least according to our methodology, they almost represent a separate category.”
Beat.
“We’re not sure why.”
I looked at her. I looked around. I felt a simultaneous sense of overwhelming alienation and overwhelming pride.
And she didn’t stop talking.
She explained that all the other disciplines require tools. A camera, paint, a musical instrument, and even dancers and actors use their body. All writers need is language.
And they’re starting to think that’s the reason why writers are so different. One can understand pigment and paint, one can take apart a camera and put it back together again, and on a purely physical level, the human body is comprehensible.
But language is a strange, strange thing, and to understand it is to understand consciousness itself, and no one understands consciousness. The very tool that writers use is as mysterious as experience itself. Of course, all artists work with the mysteries of experience, the tome of the flesh, the chance and change of this long life, but for writers their tool is as mysterious as their subject matter.
And so writers are very, very strange.
“And in a very internalized way. Most artists need to externalize whatever it is that goes on inside. But writers can keep it all inside — there’s nothing physical or exterior about what they do — and that makes them even stranger. Even a social introvert like you.”
She kept her gaze on me, waiting for my response. I’d never thought about any of that before. Five years later, I think about it a lot.”

Nanowrimo begins today. Well, began today. 13 hours ago in my time zone. Thousands of people are excitedly typing, scribbling, talking about, outlining novels. Good ones. Bad ones. Very bad ones. And I think I’m going to take part. Not exactly by their rules – I’ll be working on a piece I’m already 30,000 words into. But I’ve lately been rediscovering my writing, my method of mediation. I’ve been learning after a hiatus of nearly a year how important it is to my level of satisfaction with my life, how important it is to my emotions and to my sense of self. And so I’m determined to write every day. Will I hold myself to 1,667 a day, 50,000 before December 1? No. Not at all. But I will hold myself to something every day. Something to meditate upon.

It’s November, month of gratitude.

Today, I’m thankful for this opportunity to retreat from life as it has been and rediscover what it can be.

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