Organic Editing

It turns out that writing as meditation is no easier with a cold than regular writing. Brain fog is brain fog. But it cleared, eventually, and I got back to work.

What I’m trying to do is kind of like floating, to move through my day letting the day be what the day will be. Which is exactly what it will be anyway. At least this way I recognize my lack of control over life. I wonder what today will bring?

In October we met some mountain sheep at Lake Minnewanka, just hanging out, and I was able to take a whole bunch of pictures using a zoom lens. This is what the day gave us.

This is how I need to write, to find what I find in a story. Other writers will recognize this. It’s often taught as freefall writing. I’m trying to extend that to editing.

I’m trying to turn off my cognitive mind and just let the writing write, the reading read, the editing edit. I’ve decided to call this organic editing, to distinguish it from cognitive editing. Editing without the thinking mind. I know, this sounds like total lunacy. And yet, here I go. This is my current writing exercise.

I’m trying to sit down to editing with a really quiet mind, and not let the thinking mind, the cognitive mind, get in the way. If it tries and I notice, I quiet it, or I stop working. Writing is sporadic and slow, and yet there’s something wonderful here I need to learn.

I’ve wondered if playing the right music or a teaching as background might be useful for keeping my mind where I want it to be. My first try was with Philip Glass. The music helped pull me into the right place in my mind, but once I was editing well, organic editing, then the music pulled me away and I turned it off.

I’m hoping organic editing will get easier with practice, as I train my brain in this new way of working.

Maureen

Not Writing

Writing hasn’t been happening. It’s like I get up a little steam, an idea that I’m ready to leap in with, and any energy for leaping vanishes. I suspect I still need to wait ­– to not return to writing, but to move into it from a new place, except I keep slipping into the old pattern. So I wait. More quiet. More listening for the right next thing to do. Enjoying the beauty of fall. Catching up on odds and bits of tasks. Allowing myself to move slowly, to be quiet, to settle into silence. To accept I may not write again and that would be fine. Of course, as soon as I go there I’m reassured you will write again. But I’m not quite there, and pushing to get closer drives it away. I need to allow not writing to be okay. To simply be, to rest in silence. More and more I’m learning the importance of silence, of falling into it, resting in it, marinating in it.

It’s oddly nondirective in a society that pushes us to drive, to plan, to lean in. Instead, I’m putting down the paddle and waiting to see where the flow of life takes me. For those who say Into the rocks, water flows around rocks. It knows how to flow downhill. And my spiritual practice right now is to trust that.

Maureen

Silence

Silence in my head

like entering a large room

after a crowded party

at a gallery

empty

silent

freshly painted white

the last art show gone

the new not yet hung

the room waiting

I lay my papers on the floor

study write and shuffle pages

when I’m done I sit back

into silence

Words Words Words

I watched a murder of crows congregate in a spruce tree across the street, cawing to call others to join them. Another group cawed back from a block away. “No, no, our group is better. Come here, come here.”

I had to fight to stop myself from thinking about the great names for congregations of birds, like a murder of crows, and instead stay in the moment and simply be present with the crows.

I struggle with this in writing, too. Writing is all about the words, and yet to be wholly present in the story, I need to let go of thinking about words, and fall into the story itself. I need to not think about editing, or word choice, and simply flow with the story, knowing I can work on the other stuff later.

I struggle to hold that focus, distracted by ideas I want to jot down, the need for another cup of tea, that insistent nag to check email or Facebook. And so I come back to it over and over and over, in a circular meditation of being present, failing, and coming back.

Just watching the crows is a meditation, too. Or that moment when I see a flower in the morning, glowing as the sun hits it. “Ahh.” That pause needs to be wordless, too.

I rarely sit in meditation now, as every day is a meditation, every moment an opportunity to be present, or not. Which shall I choose in this moment?

Maureen

To Walk The Earth

we are spirit

embodied in form

trees mosquitoes sparrows

dogs humans

I learn to see

but with new eyes

breathing from a new place

somehow

being

being

being the universe

embodied here