you can be anything you want to be

It’s holiday week again, which just means that we are packing up the car with tents and tarps and camp stoves and such, and heading down to wellfleet for 3 or 4 days of camping and swimming and basic chilling out in the company of sand, trees, and fairies.

Holi Daze redux

And even though this was the focus just 2 weeks ago, in my own humble opinion this relaxation thing is something that just cannot be over-emphasized, especially here in the good ole USA. There is nothing more damaging to your health, physically, energetically, emotionally, or mentally, than constant excess tension, and the most common way to build that up is the all work and no play dictum, or the work hard play hard corollary which usually actually breaks down as work too much and then get loaded. Yeah.

So of course aside from the fact that we are working way too much here in the States, meaning we are the world champs at putting in the hours, and aside from the obvious solution to that which is to work less and enjoy life more, there is the question of why the hell do we do that? And what does it benefit us?

Why the hell do we work so hard?

Yeah. Well. I suppose there are lot’s of possible reasons to the why–like almost as many reasons as people, and there are some folks who simply think it’s good to work, puritan ethic and all that, yet we are really setting some records here that would put the puritans to shame, and it seems to me that there is a perception of necessity that is driving all of this incessant work.

For some folks it’s literally paying the rent. Their base hourly wage is so low and their rent/food/utilities that multiple jobs and/or massive overtime are pretty much a requirement. And for most of us this is simply not the case.

For most of us the big driver is something not really like keeping up with the Joneses, since we don’t even know the Joneses anymore, as much as keeping up with the “priceless” lifestyle. We just think all the stuff we need to keep us happy is more valuable than the only thing we’ve really got–time.

Time makes lovers feel like they got something real

So we trade our time for stuff. And of course once we’ve got that stuff we discover that we need more stuff, and we wind up in the perpetual cycle that Matt Johnson so clearly delineates in True Happiness This Way Lies:

Have you ever wanted something so badly
that it possessed your body & your soul
through the night & through the day
until you finally get it!
And then you realize that it wasn’t what you wanted after all.
And then those selfsame sickly little thoughts
now go & attach themselves to something….
….or somebody….new!
And the whole goddamn thing starts all over again.

The wrong kind of Work and the wrong kind of Serious

And back to relaxation. The number one killer in this country is heart disease, a disease of stress. Most of our other physical, mental, and emotional disorders are caused or exacerbated by stress as well. And this stress is basically caused by working too hard and taking life too seriously.

The two of course go hand in glove. And it’s this sort of insanity that drives people with plenty to want more and better. Where nothing is ever good enough or enough enough. Which is always perception.

No shortage of Prophets

Which is one thing I love about camping, where the simplest things are astounding and wonderful. Where sitting in the peace of trees and fresh air is totally enough, and walking to a clean and delightful fresh water pond is an adventure of high undertaking, an expo-tition.

Where life is as fresh and clear and simple as life in the hundred acre wood, with Christopher Robin, Winnie ther Pooh and the whole gang. Now the strange thing is that this story is as old as the hills. Nothing new here–we’ve had the prophets of “chill out and get present to how wonderful the simple life is” with us forever:

• the aforementioned a.a. Milne of Winnie the Pooh fame,
• P.L.Travers who wrote Mary Poppins,
• the hippies, and the beats before them,
• all the way back to Jesus Christ considering the lillies of the field which toil not (and never was Solomon in all is splendor arrayed such as these),
• and of course before that Lao Tsu and Siddhartha and all the Taoist and Buddhist bikkhus cutting out from civilization and chilling in the woods.

So it’s nothing new–and there is no reason to believe that the mass of people will start listening to this call any time soon. And still–we are each of us blessed with the ability to deviate from the herd, to step aside, if only for a few days at a time, for a few hours at a time, and redefine our needs and wants, to re-examine what is really vital, and what we have to do to get it, or maybe just accept it as a birthright.

Worth looking at. Seriously!

photo by FaceMePLS

What is Stuff?

This has been a week of tackling space, and the stuff that fills it, and I’ve made a few observations about that which id like to share with you, if only because that’s what I do, share observations; hopefully with a net result of value on your side as well as mine.

In the realm of stuff, what I’ve noticed is that we are certainly surrounded by it, and for my purposes today I’m going to call stuff anything that has been altered in some way by us, people, humanity, etc. In other words, the world of nature, from which everything derives, thank Universe, isn’t stuff until I move it, or alter it in some way.

The Attention Grabbers

So inside my home, and outside as well, there is stuff almost everywhere I look, and one thing all the stuff I see has in common is that it is all competing for my attention. Somehow or other, all this stuff wants to be touched, felt, seen, gazed upon–it all wants me to offer it my rapt attention. For a moment at least, and hopefully for a moment that will make an indelible mark on my psyche/spirit/whatever and set me coming back for more.

Some of that stuff is blatant advertising/marketing etc.; it’s only raison d’etre is this very thing: to grab my attention and then keep it, or to then act like a sleeper cell only to awaken when I am in a position to pull out my wallet  and spend a bit more of my thin slice of the centralized currency pie, or my plastic promise to pay later (we are all Wimpy now).

The rest of it wants my attention for other reasons, known or unknown, to the maker or to myself or to no one. Not that I am ruling nature out of this look at me game; it’s the inventor after all. And today I’m just talking about stuff.

Look at Me!

So then. How do me get any psychic space if we are surrounded by a million little objects chirping look at me! look at me!! look at me!!! like a four year old on a sugar binge? Well, we can go numb, we can erect psychic blocks, we can take substances of one sort or another–and all of those methods, popular as they are, just serve to close down our experience of life and make our world a bit smaller.

We can also be more selective a out what we are surrounded with–on a macro scale as in location location location, and on a micro scale as in look around the house and get rid of the stuff that is deadening us, or eliciting behavior we aren’t happy with.

And so we arrive at the ever popular subject of de-cluttering. Now, I’m no de-cluttering diva, no organizing angel, that’s a definite unarguable truth; and I’ve noticed 3 things about clutter/stuff:

1. Some of it is static–it’s there, and it’s relatively unchanging except for the gathering of dust.
2. Some of it is dynamic–it ebbs and flows on a daily or a weekly basis.
3. Some of it is alive–it changes of it’s own accord.

A Super Simple Strategy

So in taking care of clearing out some space in this world of stuff, I’ve discovered that if you want to make any headway, tackle the living stuff first. This is the nip it in the bud / a stitch in time saves nine way of doing things.

If I spend five minutes weeding my garden today, it will save me an hour or two next week. If I wash the dishes when they are freshly used, it will take half as much scrubbing as it would if I wait an hour or two, and the 5 minutes I need to tackle a small pile will be easier to find than the 30 minutes needed to take on an overflowing sink.

The dynamic stuff, on the other hand, is quite often a time sink. Like my desk. It ebbs and over-flows, and tackling it head-on is quite often futile, especially if I don’t change the habits that clutter it up in the first place, habits which if changed may just as easily prevent the clutter rather than build it–things like:

• Properly sorting the mail when it enters the house,
• Dealing with things when they come up if they are the sorts of things that need to be dealt with,
• Or tossing, recycling, shredding, or otherwise disposing of them if they are the sorts of things that really don’t matter.

And then there are the static messes which, really to be honest here, id simply prefer to get out of sight until the weather turns bad. So there.

The Authentic Stuff

Now, I had wanted to talk about authenticity and how it is often confused with transparency, or letting it all hang out, or telling everyone everything; and really at this point I’m going to have to leave that for another time mostly. The weather calls.

Suffice to say that “be yourself” works for me in all things and at all times. And if your self is boring and defensive (though I doubt it), so be it. If it makes you happy, go for it. If yourself is mysterious and alluring and as full of secrets as Laura Palmer, well, more power to you. If it makes you happy it can’t be that bad, eh?

In the simplest terms, authenticity comes from the insides, and isn’t about the outer view at all. It’s about being honest with yourself and walking your own walk. Sometimes that includes channeling the energy of someone else. Where would The Beatles have come from if not for Elvis and Chuck Berry and Little Richard? And sometime it means being so original that no-one else on the planet has a clue what you are going on about. And where would any of us be without Sarah Palin?

So there. Have a good weekend. Ciao.

photo by hassan abdel-rahman

Is that a synchronicity in your pocket?

So just in time to get the house back in order after spending 5 days away (how does that happen?), this week is a short and sweet motivator about getting the house in order.

Short like Napolean

Well…we all know how important to have a sense of order around us. And how important it is to have just the right sense of order. Too much and we feel like we are living in a museum, with just enough subliminal “do not touch” signs posted around and about that we get the “do not live” message loud and clear. And then the back starts to hurt.

Too little order and we begin to feel like we are living la vida Palin, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. And sometimes life is like that. And once you get off the roller coaster it might be worth checking your hair and your collar and wiping the drool off your face!

Sweet like honey

And then there is that perfect sense of I know where everything is, I can relax without sitting on anything, and all the passageways are clear and easy to find. So that the shape of the home acts as a support to a well lived life, setting a stage for all of the things we get to do once we’ve got our food, intimacy, physical activity, and relaxation rolling like a wheel.

The Housekeeping Shuffle

And so without any further ado, it’s time to fire up a pot of tea, put the iPod on the housekeeping shuffle, and make it so.

photo by ibm4381

Abbreviated, because I’m on holiday, and here, because traditions are important: straight from iPhone notes to you, auto correction and all, it’s Friday in the wilders of New Hampshire.

Just like Google Maps

Funny thing about intention: you set up a destination, and it chooses whatever route it finds to be the most efficacious. Your wishes and desires be damned.

“Oh, you wanted sunny? I was focusing on the reset!”

The Reset

Oh yeah. My intention for this holiday to begin with was to get the family away from the familiar. Put us in circumstances that would disrupt ourdaily routines enough to allow us the opportunity to push the reset button.

Like sleeping in a tent with no pressing reason to get up at any particular time, aside from discomfort, which cuts both ways: there’s nothing about sleeping on the ground that makes you want to linger in the sleeping bags except that they are so damned uncomfortable that the quality of sleep was quasi at best. And then there’s making up for all those early mornings in “the real world”.

And yet today, after 2 days of sleeping in past 10, aided by the rain, which we will get to soon enough, I rose unbidden into the cool of morning, set up the camp stove for some green tea, and lit the citronella candle to preserve some small portion of my blood reserves from the onslaught of mosquitos so hungry from the lack of opportunity precipitated by 3 days of solid rain that they didn’t bother waiting in line, they just gang rushed my ankles, arms, and head and set to sippin’.

How do you light a campfire in the rain?

So long story shorter, yesterday it never stopped raining. The locals are all joking about building an ark, as apparently it’s rained 29 of the past 31 days up here, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this past month’s extended deluge precipipitates a bumper crop of little Noa’s and Noah’s in 8 moons’ time.

And if you have never tried it, I’ll let you know straight out that camping in the rain is advanced training for positive mood regulation, and that the phrase itself is going to enter my lexicon for those times when nothing goes the way I want it to.

“Oh man, I feel like I’m camping in the rain”.

And also for those times when nothing goes the way I want it to until it turns out better than I could have planned!

“Woo hoo, it feels like I’m camping in the rain!”

What the hell am I blathering on about?

So apart from the ever changing weather forecast (“Tomorrow the weather is going to be better” “That’s what you said yesterday!”), yesterday as I mentioned was the day of all rain all day. Let’s see, we had showers, drizzle, downpour, frog strangler, and the ever popular nice weather for ducks, although even the ducks were in hiding yesterday.

And yesterday was the day to light up a fire, toast some weanies, and go to Story Land. Three strikes and you’re out, as they say. So after much huff and puff and struggle with the Yogic Attitudes, we drove into North Conway.

We had hot cocoa and chai, we met several lovely shop keepers and somehow or other we managed to wander onto Diagon Alley where I discovered s fabulous wand with 3 stones made from the fallen branch of a Rowan tree!

Well, I thought that was the peak of my day. It was a magical moment and a magical find in a magical shop which turned this wet wet wetness into a magical day.

That kid’s gonna be a star (He already is!)

Then we discovered the 1790 Homestead Restaurant. Which is as homey and tasty as its name. And which sponsors a live open mic on Thursday nights. An electric open mic. Drums guitars and all that rock and roll.

And so Rowan went nuts! He played the drums. He played the guitar. He danced like a madman. He td everyone that he was four! And he adopted the owners 16 something son Jake as his new friend.

What was that about silver linings?

And so we finally headed back to camp and fell asleep to the sound of drip drop pitter pitter pat. And dreamed sweet dreams of camping in the rain.
And what about the fishin’?

Well, the sun is shining, we’re off to Story Land, and fiddle dee dee, tomorrow is another day. I’m sure we’ll have some tales of the one that got away.

photo by Sister72

Holiday vs. Vacation

What do you do when you aren’t feeling motivated? What do you do when you feel like you’ve come up to a dead end–when nothing seems to be panning out and you aren’t especially excited about where you are at, and you have no faith in your ability to get anywhere else? Well, this is what the holiday is all about.

Funny thing about the use of words. Here in the States when you go away for a few days we call it a vacation. You are vacating your place at work, basically. So when we go away to get refreshed and enlivened it’s in relation to coming back with more energy to place into our jobs.

In Britain and such they call this same thing going on holiday. Wow. That’s a completely different concept. Holiday is Holy Day–so it’s taking some time to get in touch with all that is holy–it’s some time to commune with our deeper selves, our free selves, the selves we are when we are not chained to a desk, etc.

So. Totally different concepts. Vacations are in relation to work. Holidays are in relation to Spirit, Universe. And so a vacation becomes an escape of sorts, an opportunity to get away from something we are going to come back to, while a holiday is something different, a going into something, a getting closer to and a basking in a sort of freedom that is our birthright, all too often abdicated in the name of honor, duty, and fear.

So whatever the weather, and it’s raining raining raining as I pen these words, and the forcast for the next week looks like we’ll be getting more of the same, taking a holiday feels like exactly the ticket for getting that ticket of refresh and renew that is so necessary from time to time, or as often as possible perhaps.

But I might die tonight!

It’s been a steady drum beat from this neck of the woods that we are all working too much over here, meaning the USA, and that once you factor in commuting, a regular 40 hour job ends up taking up virtually your entire work week, leaving a few hours at the end of the work day to eat dinner and wind down before going to sleep in order to get up the next morning and start the whole damn thing all over again, and then the weekend to try getting in some time for fun and laughter in between shopping, doing the laundry, and all the other little life-chores that we don’t have time for during the work week, which after all is all about work.

Whew.

And for some reason the mentality of the self employed goes down that same damned rabbit hole if not even worse. Remember the white rabbit? “I’m late, I’m late! Oh my ears and whiskers!” It’s the make it happen now so I can enjoy my life later syndrome, which Cat Stevens sang about thusly, way back in 1970 or something like that:

I don’t want to work away
Doing just what they all say
Work hard boy and you’ll find
One day you’ll have a job like mine…
But I might die tonight!

Final Screed

So this seems to be a good week to put a wedge into it and remember that we work that we may live, and that there is something completely screwed up about 100 years of rapidly increasing wealth and productivity and people still working just as much if not more, to the point that they don’t even raise their own children any more!

So anyway, that’s about all I have to say. Tomorrow I’m lighting off to the lakes of New Hampshire, to holiday amongst the vacationers!

photo by Robert Scoble

Later is Earlier is the Same as it Ever Was?

Sitting on the couch at 6:02 and noting that oddly enough, with the Sun coming up earlier and earlier, I’m getting up later and later, which confused me for a few until I realized that hey, it’s also going down later and later, especially with daylight saving time, so that on the one hand, I’m staying up later and so of course I’m getting up later, and on the other hand, it’s still bloody 5am as far as the Sun, the Earth, the Moon, and my damn body are concerned. So there.

Doing less and enjoying it more

Also in the realm of time and such, I’m really feeling the effects of Summer (despite the rain rain rain we’ve been having here in Boston), which is ever and always the season of Huck Finn to me, the season that whispers in my ear:

Hey. Whatcha doin’? Wouldn’t you rather be fishing?

And hey–funny thing I don’t see too many of those I’d rather be fishing bumper stickers here in Boston, ‘cos in Iowa they’re on like every third car, along with my kid beat up your honor student and if you are reading this you are too damn close to my bumper so back the fuck up, jack.

Oh well. I actually am going fishing next week! It’s Story Land time, which Rowan is super excited about, meeting Humpty Dumpty and all, and going for a ride in Alice’s Magic Teacups. And it’s camping in New Hampshire time; five days in the woods with no internet connection woo hoo hoo!

Well, I’ll have my iPhone, so I’ll post something on Friday cos, as Havi says, it’s a tradition, and traditions are important. And still…it may not be the Wilderness, and I’m going to light out to it anyway! Yeah.

Food Inc.

So anyway, it’s Summer. The garden is doing nicely. Full of weeds and I don’t mind. I just pick them before they get too big and add ‘em to the compost. More grist for the mill, you know? At least I know where my food comes from.

And if you ain’t so sure of where your food comes from I suggest heading down to your nearest enlightened movie house and taking in Food Inc., which I saw at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Wednesday, just after Ran and I took Tal’s class over at Yoga Now in East Dedham.

It felt good to me moving together, side by side, breathing, breathing, breathing, getting in touch with the mind behind the mind, or some Hippy Yoga Consciousness kind of thing, and then it felt good to go see a movie that reveals the true cost of our Techno-Frankenstein Food Production System, the Environmental cost, the financial Tax Dollars Supporting Mega Corporations cost, and the Human Beings getting Squeezed by said Mega Corporations cost.

Michael Pollan is in the film, and served as an advisor of sorts, and that by itself is worth the price of admission, and there is so much more than that. Enlightening and Moving, Film Inc. gets 2 thumbs up from this household. Check it out!

Little Fishes

We also picked up a fish tank that afternoon, and are now the proud caretakers of 3 new little swimmers. Graceful and Grape, the tetras, and Giraffe, the we’re not sure yet, now join Gilbert and Glasses, the guppies, in our little water menagerie.

Rowan named them, bless his heart, and isn’t it ironic that we boost up the bounty of fish for pets just days before we take our first trip in search of fish for food. Ah well. Such is life. The one hand giveth and the other hand taketh away! It’s all a wheel of Creation, Sustainment, and Destruction on this Earth that we love so dearly.

That’s it for today. Enjoy your weekend! Keep Moving! And listen for the voice of Summer whispering in your ear!

Love,

Chas

photo by jelene

Completing the Core

The past two weeks I’ve been working on truing the wheel of my life, starting with the most core areas and working outward. All of this is part of the ongoing theme of self healing that began way way back on January 1^st 2009. Remember back that far? All the changes so far this year! Who’d a thunk it, eh?

So the quick recap is that 2 weeks ago we took on food, and last week we took on intimacy. Following the spiral of human development, once we have met our needs for food nourishment, and touch–connection–intimacy, the next step is to begin to increase our ability to move about.

Primary for the development of language and the nervous system, movement is one of the core areas of Self. As we move, so we think; as we move, so we speak; as we move, so we are.

Movement as Energy

So when we are truing our wheel and bringing ourselves into balance and wholeness, the sooner we get into movement, the sooner we examine our movement, the sooner we increase the range and quality of our movement, the sooner we will experience an increase in our vitality, in our sense of calm, and in our sense of place, of being in the right place at the right time to do what we are here to do.

If eating and touching, food nourishment and physical intimacy, are the core of our beingness, then movement is the thing that completes out core and then begins the transition outward into expression and doing. Movement helps us to ascertain and develop our sense of place in the world.

So as important as movement is, why are we so limited in our expression of it?

Consider the child, in constant expression of movement. Running, jumping, dancing, squirming, wiggling, giggling–so much energy expressed at movement. It is this movement itself that we call having energy, it is the movement of the child that tells us the child is full of energy. Energy expressed as movement.

Busting a New Move

And then consider the adult. For most of us, we live in a world of repetitive and limited movement. We do the same thing every day, from the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep. Our range and palette of motion is so very narrow, and hardly ever do we surprise ourselves by busting a new move, and when we do, it’s usually not a good thing! Like a fall, or something strenuous that wakes us up the next morning with an ouch!

The result of this movement streamlining is that our emotional and mental lives have become streamlined as well–we emote and think in the ways that we move, and we get narrower and narrower as the years go by. The groove becomes a rut.

What to do? Well, everyone is different, and there are so many options!

• Hiking and biking.
• Dancing and prancing.
• Tai chi and chi gong.
• The burgeoning world of yoga.

It’s an endless list of possibility, and the important thing is to shake it up and surprise ourselves, and in that spirit my project for the week is to walk ever day–on a new path! To find a different way to get where I am going, and to find a couple of new places to take some walks for pleasure.

And then to add to that a daily 15 minute session of Shiva Nata, that wacky brain training movement thingy that gets the arms and legs moving in all directions at the same time. Noting will shake up your nervous system in a good way like Dance of Shiva. Talk about let’s get lost! And laughter of course. No point getting intentional lost in the dance without working in a solid sense of humor.

Ultimately, it’s an impossible practice, as the whole point of the thing is to keep progressing to the point at which it becomes impossible! In some respects, Shiva Nata is the practice of making the impossible possible, and then abandoning the possible for the impossible. Woo hoo!

So that’s the week ahead. Shake up the movement, inspired by my son who is completely uninhibited in his crazy life of movement, who dances like no other, and who loves to run, jump, and climb.

Free your ass and your mind will follow, as they say. And may this be the week of free your movement and your life will follow. Salut!

photo by ^riza^

Hand Crafted

As far as theme weeks go, this one was a doozy, and it will certainly bear repeating on a regular basis, as it seems that intimacy is a core issue, perhaps the core issue as we’ll see a bit later, and it also seems to bring stuff up–out of the frying pan and into the fire perhaps, and yet up as in a synchronous feast!

The week began with the bottling of another hand crafted batch of kombucha, a fermented beverage I’ve been brewing every ten days for the past year and a half. A bit like a slightly vinegary green tea ginger ale is probably the best way I can describe it, although not so fizzy unless I’m really lucky.

Kombucha is full of probiotics like lactobacillus, one of the primary missing in action items from our contemporary diets, much more power packed in that way than yogurt, the catch all for these little digestively beneficial critters, and it’s fun to have something alive in the house in a science experiment kind of way!

I’ll write more about kombucha soon, and ill even post a how-to for those of you who like to do. And for those of you already a bit in the know about kombucha, yet lacking the requisite scobies to get the project going, I do have some babies available–zap me on the contact form and they are yours if you need them!

Hand Cut

On the hand crafted front it has also been a week of spinach and arugula straight from the garden. I’m overwhelmed actually. Amazing abundance this year, one benefit of all the rain we’ve been having. And not only lots of harvesting–lots of yumminess! This is literally the best spinach and arugula ever!

And hand cut! Does that add to the yumminess? Is there an intimacy/yumminess factor going on? Perhaps!

Hand picked

Further from home, via the radio and the internet, it was a week of synchronicities. I decide that it is Intimacy Week and then On Point runs an interview with Christina Nehring, author of “A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-First Century”, making the claim that contemporary love is a “poor and shrunken” thing.

On that same day I write a post about how Prevention of Disease and Promotion of Health are two completely different animals, and we’ll never be healthy or have a decent healthcare system until we switch our thinking around health, and then Mark Hyman, one of the few doctors I can roundly applaud for thinking out of the box, writes a piece for Huffington Post about 9 things we can do to solve the health care crisis in America–very worthwhile reading indeed.

Enlightened Intimacy

And finally, in the midst of all of this realization of just how core intimacy really is, Christina Sell, an Anusara Yogi living in Texas, uses a Jack Kornfield quote as a blog post header–a quote that just really blows this thing open:

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

Yikes! Yeah! There we go! Talk about a sound bite!

And so that’s the kind of week it was. And the week coming? Sunday is Summer Solstice, longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and Father’s Day to boot! As tough as it can be navigating the waters of love and the shores of authority, sailing through the straits of being a man and being yourself, fathers need all the help they can get! Give them your love, give them your gratitude, give them the gift of massage from someone who knows!

photo by Amanda M Hatfield

Sharing the Morning Pages

I’ve been starting my day with 3 handwritten pages off and on for the past 10 years, full-on steady for the past 9 or 10 months. I wake up, walk to the couch, sit down and let the words pour out. It’s a process I initially lifted from Julia Cameron, author of The Artists Way and several other books on developing the Creative Spirit, and which I have over the past 6 months more fully developed into my own thing.

In Julia’s World, these are called Morning Pages, and they are basically a brain dump, useful only as a process, written and then stored away for eternity, recycled perhaps, or used to create a bit of fiery warmth in the Winter. Who knows. At any rate, written and not read.

For myself, they began to shift a bit 6 months ago into what I called Directed Morning Pages, 3 handwritten pages on a pre-determined subject, mostly as a way to explore certain qualities that I wanted to increase in my daily life, specific areas of gratitude, perhaps. More recently I’ve begun reading and even sharing my morning pages, the ultimate taboo in The Artists Way, as I have discovered that going to sleep with a subject in mind can lead to waking up with plenty of words just waiting to slide out of my Pilot G-2, onto the blank pages of my u:create sketch diary, and eventually, via the tip tap of my fingertips, onto the digitized screen that you are reading now.

Scratching vs. Pecking

The immediacy of writing with ink pen and paper is so much more satisfying to me than the peck peck peck that I’ve been using since I first bought a typewriter some 30 years ago. I don’t know if I will ever go back to composing at the keyboard. I love sitting on the couch cross legged, for one thing, and the early morning quiet for another. There is something soothing about the sound of the pen scratching the paper that the tap tap tap of a keyboard can never hope to match.

And mostly it’s just the feeling of directness. When I write by hand there is a sort of magic in the movement. It’s an art by itself, handwriting is: word sketching. Perhaps this is why I write in a sketch book. And the pace seems perfect–not too fast and not too slow.

Piling up a Mess of Words

There’s a Mark Twain quote about typewriters in which he says that they can pile up a mess of words real fast, or something like that, and for me there is something about that pace that gets in the way a bit. I reach many more stopping and waiting points with the keyboard, like I’m waiting for the buffer to fill back up, while by hand it’s just a continuous flow.

Perhaps this just comes from ten years of practice in writing without stop whatever flows out of my hand, which is usually so perfectly synchronized with the words I ”hear” in my head that I’m not really sure which is leading and which is following, or if it really is just some sort of seamless co-creation!

At any rate, it’s a satisfying way to get the words out, to share on this most public of  media words put down in such an intimate way…pen to paper, straight from the heart, 5:15 in the morning. Just me and the birds. Peace.

Addendum: According to a recent poll 399 out of 400 people prefer a massage from a real live human being to a massage from a machine. See what I’m saying?

How about you? What’s your writing process? Any thoughts on the relationship between Public and Intimate? On maintaining your Humanity in the midst of Technology?

photo by Kristian D.