To belong in the world of writing is a wondrous thing
This short piece of writing was the result of frustration. ‘Write Something’ keeps moving through my head. And so I decided to do just that. It is a stream-of-consciousness piece of writing influenced by some work I engaged in years ago. I demanded that the writer in me turn up on the page. “Writing is re-writing,” said Dr. Jean Houston. Test it out yourself. See what happens. Warmest Margi
To belong, she thought, was a wondrous thing… she sipped her tea, this time French Earl Grey (with a bouquet that she could not name), and mused that it was indeed the tea of the gods. After inspecting her garden, a habit she embraced each morning, noting the number of slugs and snails that were still out and about. “I must do something about that” she sighed, witnessing the decimation of a couple of prized plants. She walked inside and curled up on her couch where she liked to read, then write, almost daily rituals...she was trying to be more disciplined, for she had an encyclopedia of the “still unknown” to write, and she knew that if she wanted to pen something monumental, she needed enormous strength and commitment. “How do I do that when I allow everything else to take priority? Procrastination. I need to transform into something else entirely. Someone else completely”. She looked at her watch. Time was ticking. A feeling of panic rose in her breath. She needed more time.
After a few moments of pondering and dilly-dallying, she sidled up to Time, the great Goddess of Chronos and Kairos, who was hiding high on the other side of the verandah, as Great Goddesses tend to do, and asked her politely:
"Dear goddess of Time. please forgive this intrusion, but I am needing more of you than I usually demand. I am wanting to be a Writer of Truth, and as such, require a little more time in the morning. could you be so kind".
and Goddess of Time looked down at the woman from their great height and said
“Young one (for compared to the Goddess, she was positively a baby, although in her seventh decade) you always have kairos time, it’s just that you forget. It is only Chronos time that I manage so strictly. Go and do the time warp dance, the dance of moving time. You learned it from your Mentor. You know the one”.
And the woman thanked the goddess for indeed she did know the exercise to which she was referring. But will it work?
Image by Markus Winkler
The woman prepared herself. She sat still, her large typewriter perched on her knee, her mug of earl grey within reach, and with closed eyes, she began to dream and as she dreamed, music began to seep into her consciousness, moving her deeper into Kairos time. She imagined that time existed as a metre-rule (for this was the process that her Mentor had taught her the last time she visited her):
The one-metre ruler was divided into three: the first third of the ruler was one’s past, the middle third was one’s present and the third was one’s future. all even. all neat and tidy. Her Mentor asked her to start to dream this on:
Imagine that your breath is smooth and quiet and deep and nurturing and as you breathe you imagine you are crossing time...moving from present, to past, back to present, to future then back again.
How easy it was to jump across time...she thought...weeeeee. and then she decided to increase her ‘present’ because she wanted a three-hour writing window. Of course, she would have to stop for mere domestic tasks such as cooking and washing and cajoling and cleaning and mopping and gardening, and patting her two giant black dogs. Then a strange idea came to her. She wondered a most interesting thought: what if she made herself small? Would fewer demands be made of her? Perhaps those around her would not even be able to see her and she could disappear into Kairos time! So she began to imagine herself shrinking down, (just like Alice). “The smaller I get, the more they will leave me alone, and consequently the more time for my writing” she figured.
'What a curious feeling!…I must be shutting up like a telescope.' (Alice, in Alice in Wonderland)
But rather than shutting up like a telescope, the woman wanted to be in control of her transformation. She wanted to narrow her focus in order to widen her lens of creativity and understanding. What if she was only seven inches high, (her face brightened up at the thought), the right size to plunge into her typewriter? She waited for a few minutes to see if she could imagine shrinking that small: she felt a little nervous about this; 'for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' (from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland). So, she decided that to make it worthwhile she would try to shrink to but a few inches. She closed her eyes and imagined that she was growing smaller. She imaged herself finding her way into the world of the typewriter..it was difficult at first for it was something she had never attempted to do before, and anything new is always a little scary.
She began to dream, and gradually oh so gradually, she began to feel her body actually sitting on the keys of the typewriter. It was a glorious and rather exquisite feeling, even though it took the whole of her body’s strength to press down on the keys. She began to type in this embodied fashion, dancing from one key to the next as she felt moving images swirl and guide her. Soon enough, the words formed themselves, words like “The past no longer is” and she remembered Buddha's advice from long ago. Her mother had a habit of writing different quotes on her walls, particularly the stairwell. She knew this one by heart:
The past no longer is.
the future has not yet come.
looking deeply at life as it is
in the very here and now
the practitioner dwells in stability and freedom
(cited in Ian Gawler and Paul Bedson's Meditation an in-Depth Guide. 2010. Allen & Unwin: Australia.)
She felt a warmth creep into her heart, and a spark of joy move into her mind. Not only did this steady her, but it also made her smile as she remembered the wisdom of her mother. In those few moments, she seemed to rediscover the gem of writing. To first find her stability in the moment: Right now, right here, nothing to do but write. “What if this is where I belong?” she mused. Once stability and steadiness moved closer to her, she began to relax into the freedom of dreaming. And so she did until the alarm shook her awake, knocking her typewriter onto the rug. But all was well.