Natalie Goldberg--the writing life

Every time I pick up one of Natalie Goldberg’s books and read a page or two, I’m inspired. Mexican Hat--Las Vegas NWR, Las Vegas, NM

I had the pleasure of experiencing four days of study with Natalie Goldberg and Sean Murphy, along with ten other participants. In the whole of that time we devoted ourselves to quieting our minds; and we wrote, and we read aloud, and then we wrote some more.

I had already read three of Goldberg's books prior to this experience but there are more—eleven altogether. If you are a writer or if you are interested in discovering more about who you are, her books are a dream to read, short chapters, gritty, inspiring.

I opened Wild Mind, Living the Writer’s Life this morning and read: “Writing is the act of discovery. If I knew everything ahead of time, why bother writing?”

And that's exactly it. Not knowing is so key to writing and to life. If we knew how to do everything, why bother? So go all out and make mistakes. Try something new and unfamiliar. Discover who you are and what matters. And write. There’s a whole wide world out there to be discovered --both inside and out.

The Silence

Clearly the most profound experience of my stay at Rose Mountain was our teachers, what they taught us about writing (and about living). Both Natalie Goldberg and Sean Murphy are talented and powerful mentors. I am fortunate to have experienced their wisdom and that it lives on in my mind, my practice and in their books. But I have wondered what aspect of this experience made it so difficult to re-engage when I returned home, so much so, that it took a full two weeks before I could feel my feet firmly replanted in everyday life again. I have concluded it was the silence. The silence of the mountain, the silence we observed just after meeting each other--thirteen of us inclusive of teachers, the silence of meditation, of walking, of writing and of listening. There was nothing superficial, shallow or pretentious to occupy our minds. Everything around us was real and pure, the air we breathed through our nose, the earth squarely solid beneath our feet, the whisper of the wind in the pines. There was nothing in the way of our opening up.
Without everyday distractions and demands to hold you to the surface, as your pen moves across the paper, what bubbles up is what matters. And what matters comes from a deeper place. And when you go deep you heal and become open to who you are.
As we read what we had written aloud to each other, this bubbling up was honored with silence, reverent, affirming silence. No reassurances bombarded you. There were no attempts to repair your composure or make your voice go away. No criticism or ‘fix it’ responses, no rushing in to make you feel better. There was only listening and silence. And how does this feel? Uncertain at first. It’s unfamiliar. But what follows is a very settling and strengthened certainty that you have honored who you are. You have listened deeply and heard what you had to say and in the midst of that profound silence, you know that is all that really matters.

The challenge then becomes, how do you hold on to that when you return? How do you incorporate that into your everyday life despite all the surface clamoring? The answer is, you practice.

Cordilleran flycatcher—the one note songster

Each morning as we ate our breakfast, meditated, walked and wrote,
a small olive brown flycatcher with a promient oval eye ring, perched outside the meditation hall and persistently rang out a one-note version of his song, 'tweep'.

I found him on a perch in this same area each morning, which was also the scene we looked out upon as we walked in meditation around the deck. This was a meditative writing workshop, a sit, walk, write workshop with Natalie Goldberg and Sean Murphy at Rose Mountain retreat near the Santa Fe National Forest in the Pecos wilderness of New Mexico. The photo below shows the deck where we most often walked. We take our feet for granted. At least, I have. Our feet ground us and balance us and they feel. I am not a barefoot person in general, but this slow walking, this meditative way of experiencing the moment in movement, grounded me in my feet. I felt the cold puddles of water after the rain, the firm cracked surface of the boards, the forgiving lump of a tiny pine cone, the uneven board edges that moved, the nails that my feet rolled over without injury. This walking grounded us to the earth and back into our senses after our minds had been quieted through sitting mediation. Aware walking--one of many profound experiences.

There is more to a flycatcher's song than just one little note but this was the note he repeated over and over again, spaced out and persistent. You can hear it with less pause beween notes at the end of Cornell’s recording of the Cordilleran flycatcher. Bird identification for some species is complicated, especially from a distance. It is the song and the location of the bird that often settles the matter. In the case of the western flycatcher, the species has been divided into two kinds according to breeding location and feather details that can’t be seen casually. And so, I will offer this identification as my best guess.

Our little flycatcher friend was all fluffed up the morning of these photos because we had thunderstorms and rain during the night and the morning air was brisk. In fact, we were all fluffed up a bit.