For Shelter, the World

Changing voice

Over at Whole Latte Life, Joanne's prompt for the day asked us how we were applying "spring cleaning" to our creative life. This one was pretty easy for me to answer.

For the past several months, I've been working on a mystery novel set in a small, fictional town in the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest (where else?) The supporting characters were making themselves known to me in vivid detail, but I was having trouble getting in touch with my main character and bringing her to life. It doesn't help that she's an introvert.

I'd started out writing the story in third person, because I wanted to be able to show action that takes place out of sight of the protagonist. It finally dawned on me to try first person instead. Yep! That has made all the difference. So now I'm going back and re-working what I've already written. It's requiring that I restructure the storyline, since I can only show what the main character experiences. It's going to make me stretch as a writer, and likewise will help the story grow organically. I am excited to see what happens.

There's a "real life" parallel to this writerly change of voice. So many seasons of cocooning, gestating, growing, transforming ... and now I am emerging, getting involved in community activities again, and I see that my voice has changed. I am expressing myself differently. Not just in the words I use, but the intent and the energy with which I engage with the world. (And with myself, too, no doubt.)

As a part of this, changes are coming to my blog, as well. As with my mystery novel, I can't wait to see what that's going to look like.  To begin with, I'm still using the Typepad platform, but after 4 1/2 years, I finally decided to purchase the domain name for the title of my blog, "For Shelter, the World".  For those of you who have my blog bookmarked in your browser, make sure to change the URL to http://forsheltertheworld.com/ 

I'll be doing some clean-up work, changing the subscription set-up to reflect the new URL, freshening the links sections, and perhaps re-organizing the blog layout.

Happy Spring to all!

Living the questions

... I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1903)

This quote from the poet Rilke has been one of my favorites since I first read it, early in my adult life. It became almost like a mantra to me. In a time when analysis, control, and the need for certainty seem to be cultural obsessions, these words remind us of the value of not knowing and of proceeding from that standpoint. This applies to the creative process as well as to our individual and collective lives. It recognizes the mystery of life, and points out that something vital is lost when we try to plan, understand and control every step of our existence.

I don't know if it's a function of my age, or whether it's my own personal path, but I've reached a point where some of my early questions have lived their way, at least partially, into answers. Along the way, the questions have metamorphosed, many times over. Things now don't look at all like I thought they would. Much better, in some respects, but it's a bittersweet realization, and requires a good bit of grieving and letting go of what was, and what could have been.

It's as if I've spent so many years observing and experiencing things from so many different angles -- or to use another analogy, it's been like gazing through a kaleidoscope, continually changing the view -- and finally I've come to a moment where the pieces are all lining up into a coherent and simple image of perfect clarity.

Tao Te Ching

Quite often I post quotes from the Tao Te Ching here on my blog, and I've had some comments and questions about it. The Tao Te Ching, pronounced something like "Dow-duh-JING", is one of the classical texts of the philosophical system known as Taoism and is purported to have been written by the legendary ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tse (also spelled Lao-Tzu or Laozi).

As with many legends, there may or may not have been an actual person named Lao Tse, in the same way as there may or may not have been someone named William Shakespeare. But as with Shakespeare's plays, the work speaks for itself, having been written in a time when the "cult of personality" wasn't as important as it is now. (Well, I'm assuming it wasn't.)

There are many reasons why I am attracted to the Tao Te Ching, and to Taoist philosophy in general. One of the main ones is that it is based on the natural world ... the rhythms and cycles of the life process, as it is reflected in nature, and as a metaphor for human existence and creativity. Much of my own poetry is written from this standpoint, using allusions from nature. And with the current chaos and constant change in the world, I find that the more I can stay grounded and in touch with the Earth and its energy, the more balanced I am.

The version of the Tao Te Ching I quote and link to is this one, maintained on the Brooklyn College/City University of New York website, based on a modern interpretation by the eminent scholar, poet and translator Stephen Mitchell. There are numerous other translations, most famously the more traditional 1972 version, re-released in 1997, by Jane English that is illustrated with the wonderful photography of Gia-Fu Feng.

Stephen Mitchell himself has a new book out, entitled The Second Book of the Tao, which just arrived in my P. O. Box from Powell's Books.

Snow on daffodils

Another little winter storm has come through, coating everything with an inch of snow. The temperature is right above freezing, so in a day or so it will have all melted away. This is the wet kind of snow, with big, smooshy snowflakes. You can see several in mid-flight in this photo, including one below the lowest tulip leaf on the left.

I love daffodils.

Rather than go into a big discussion of daffodils in February, I'll let a verse from a poem I wrote a while back speak for me ...

Oh, yellow daffodil

Your brave face shines

In the midst of winter

Turning toward the sun

I touch you

And you take my breath away

Blog jazz

A long time ago I discovered the value in putting my feelings and thoughts on paper. You could call it journalling, except it's more than that: it takes different forms, depending on what I need at the moment. Always, though, it has been as uncensored and authentic as possible. It's been me, writing to myself, for myself; essentially a kind of self-therapy, a way of coming into intimate contact with the various aspects of myself.

The reason I started blogging was so I wouldn't just be talking to myself; although I am definitely talking to myself as well, as I guess any writer or artist is. I'm potentially communicating with the entire world; anyone who surfs or Googles can end up reading what I write, and it's been amusing to see what some of the searches are that lead people to this blog.

Someone I know who writes a syndicated newspaper column was asked whether she received emails from readers and whether she answers them. Her answer was that she does little beyond acknowledging receipt, because "it's a column, not a conversation." I'm coming from a different direction with this blog. I want it to be a conversation. A mutual give-and-take of ideas and experiences and energy. The analogy I have in mind is jazz ... one person says something, another person riffs off of that, and so on.

Contrast this with an orchestra, where the musicians play music composed by another person and follow the direction of the conductor. In jazz, no one person is in control of the process and there is no absolute "road map" to follow. Each person contributes their individual unique expression, following their own creative process, trusting each other, playing off each other (and I think the concept of "play" is important here); and what they are doing is creating a greater whole. This is a new way of group creation. Both the individual and the group are of primary importance.

I'm not sure if I'm getting across what this looks like to me, but I think what I'm describing is the way the world is heading -- if it is to survive -- in terms of evolving new ways of relating and connecting. It goes way beyond people learning to "get along with each other", into actively enjoying each other's existence and co-creating in mutually beneficial ways.

Here's the dilemma I find myself in: there are certain things I want to explore here, some things that I think go to core issues facing humankind now, and particularly in the United States. I would like to put these ideas out there and see what happens. However, to discuss these things, I am going to have to talk about other people. I don't need to use names, and my intention is to do it non-judgmentally and for the purpose of discussion. To readers who know me, though, it may be apparent who I am talking about. An intrinsic part of what I want to say is derived from observing my family, and that could get a bit tricky.

My experiences this past fall after Hurricane Katrina are fundamental to what I've been seeing and realizing. Major doors are opening in my understanding and awareness. The thing is, in order to fully discuss what I need to, I may have to say things that could hurt people's feelings or make them angry and that might not show me in the best light. I lived in other people's homes for several months; things happened that led to insights for me; how do I talk about it without sounding ungrateful to the people (fallible human beings) who gave me shelter?

Labels and Boxes

A while back, a message board I participated on had a discussion of the words we humans like to use to define ourselves and each other. This was my response to the person who initiated the discussion:

Definition

we are all one word
one world

but maybe right now
that's too much
for us to know

too scary
too powerful
too intimate

so we need the labels
the boxes
the categories

to keep ourselves sorted out
we can pretend we are safe that way
we can pretend we have things under control

I can call myself
woman
writer
Buddhist
American

You can call yourself
man
gay
poet
who has a speech problem

just know those are labels
for us to use
they are not who we are