Why Not?

In one of her books, Natalie Goldberg says a writer writes no matter What, no matter Where. Such as waiting while someone you love is in the ER. Why not write? No surprise if her example inspired…a varied response. Her point, though, is not to put Art ahead of all else, although some artists succeed doing just that. She is trying to describe writing as a practice, like her Zen practice, something one just does every day. I understood that, yet still did not…concede easily. I don’t know if I do now. I do know I’m not wherever she is.

This summer I spent many hours, over several weeks, not writing in a series of uncomfortable chairs in the ER, various hospital rooms, and a rehab facility. And frankly, if I did manage a few words in the cafeteria, I was not caring about this blog. And I do care about this blog. So I’m trying to be compassionately interested in the Not Writing and in the question of Why Not? Only answer so far: after I thought about juggling two jobs, meeting my deadlines, maintaining two households, and which direction I was going on the train between states at that moment, I didn’t want to think anymore. If you want to shout that Creativity doesn’t require Thinking all the time, yeah, I know, I’m working on that. My instinct this time was to power down and preserve any reserves I had left.

Poor instinct. Because, as many people surely do in a crisis, I let go of what most sustains me to do what I had to do. That’s what I did. That’s what happened. I neither offer myself excuses nor ask myself for an apology. Both are useless. What is useful, and skillful, is to learn things from this summer about what I Need and how to Live. And practice.

An image just popped into my head from early 1970s Sesame Street, so if you’re young, Bear With. In his roving reporter role, Kermit The Frog would go interview Don Music as he was composing his latest song. Don was a wild-haired version of the Guy Smiley model. (Oh, look him UP, babies.) High-strung and forever stuck on a rhyme, Don would play notes and taste words thoughtfully before suddenly slamming his head on the keys, with a full neck-swing wind-up, shouting, “I’ll NEVER get it! NEVER!” And we Wee Ones would laugh every time. So I guess I can laugh at myself, too.

Keep playing, practicing, going. Just go. And quote slightly obscure literature to the people! The novelist Vita Sackville-West also wrote a newspaper garden column. She gardened at her home, Sissinghurst bloody Castle, thank you very much. In one column, she wrote, “…I get letters from owners of very small gardens, asking what to do about them… ‘Our plot is the usual commonplace rectangle…but I am resolved not to have a commonplace garden.’…They are restricted as to space, but not restricted in their imaginative ideas. Why, indeed, should anyone have a commonplace garden…Endless variations are possible…Naturally, every garden must be a law unto itself.”

Very Small. Resolved. Not restricted. Not. Restricted. Endless. Possible.

A law unto itself: that last bit is somehow great comfort and a real statement of challenge to our Creativity. Step up, Artists, I want to shout.

Learning from This. And hey, I gave you Muppets and an early 20^th-century novelist’s garden writing, right? Not commonplace at all.

*The photo is of Sissinghurst Castle garden in Kent, England.