Take it upon yourself to see whatever you want
This article is selected from the introduction of "Write My Heart", the author advocates finding a "capitalized" self in writing, a true freedom. Now that storytelling is popular around the world, everyone needs to tell their own story. In this article, the author tells us that writing can also be a practice, helping to gain insight into life and make one's mind clear. There is no simple truth about writing that can answer all our confusions, we must explore our lives in their entirety, and perhaps, writing is about knowing yourself. (Yang Ying)
When I was in elementary and middle school, I was a model baby with a happy heart. I wanted the teacher to like me, I learned commas, colons, and semicolons; I wrote essays with clear sentences, but they were tedious and boring, without a trace of personal original ideas and real feelings. I was just anxious to show them what I thought the teachers wanted.
When I was in college, I fell in love with literature, and I was crazy about it. In order to remember the poems of Gerald Manly Hopkins, I typed the verses over and over again with a typewriter. I read aloud the poems of Milton, Shelley, and Keats, and then lay in a daze on the cramped bed of my dorm room. When I was in university in the late sixties, I read almost exclusively male writers in England and other parts of Europe, most of whom were no longer alive. They are very far away from my daily life, and although I love their work, none of them reflect my life experience. I must have been subconsciously guessing, and writing is not within my knowledge. I didn't think about writing at all, but I secretly dreamed of marrying a poet.
After graduating from college, I realized that no one would hire me to read novels and get dizzy with poetry, so I and three friends opened a welfare restaurant in the basement of the Newman Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, serving natural food lunches. It was the early 1970s, and a year before the restaurant opened, I tasted my first avocado. The restaurant's name is "Naked Lunch," and it speaks of William Burroughs's novel—"In the moment when time freezes, everyone sees something forked at the top of each fork." "In the morning, I bake raisin muffins and blueberry muffins; when I'm in the mood, I even roast peanut butter flavors. Of course, I hope customers will love these muffins, but I know that if I care about the scones, they usually taste pretty good. We created that restaurant and we no longer had to answer great answers in order to get a good grade of an A in school. It was then that I began to learn to trust my own heart.
One Tuesday, I cooked Provencal simmered vegetables for lunch. When you're making this dish for a restaurant, it's not just about chopping an onion and eggplant; the cooking table is piled high with onions, eggplant, melons, tomatoes and garlic. I spent hours chopping vegetables, some in chunks and some slices. On my way home from work that night, I stopped at the Sandico Bookstore on Stetter Street and wandered between the shelves. I saw a thin collection of poems by Erica Joan's Fruits and Vegetables (Joan's unpublished novel Fear of Flying at the time) was still unknown. The first poem I saw when I opened the page was about boiling eggplant! I was surprised: "Do you mean that this kind of thing can also be used as a joke?" "Such a commonplace thing? What do I do on a daily basis? I opened it up. When I got home, I decided to start writing about what I knew, to believe my thoughts and feelings, and not to look at things outside of myself. I'm no longer a schoolboy, and I can say whatever I want. I write about my family because no one is going to accuse me of being wrong, and the people I know best in the world are them.
This was all fifteen years ago. A friend once said to me, "Believe in love and it will take you where you need to go." I would like to add the following sentences: "Believe in what you love, keep doing it, and it will take you where you need to go." "Don't worry too much about safety, once you start to do what you want to do, you will eventually get a great sense of security in your heart." Then again, how many of us who enjoy high incomes really feel secure?
For the past eleven years, I have taught writing classes in many places. The University of New Mexico; the Lama Foundation; the Dowsian hippie in New Mexico; the Nuns in Abuquiqui; the juvenile delinquents at Boulder; the Technical College at the University of Minnesota and Norfolk, Nebraska, called Northeast College; as an interscholastic poet in Minnesota; and at home for a Sunday night writing class for gay groups. I teach students the same way over and over again, and that's a basic knowledge of trusting your own heart and developing confidence in your own life experiences. I am tired of teaching and not saying anything, so I have a deeper understanding.
I began to learn to meditate in 1974. From 1978 to 1984, I formally studied Zen at the Minnesota Zen Center in Minneapolis. Whenever I went to see him and asked him to teach the Buddha's doubts, I was confused until he said, "You know, it's like when you're writing..." He took writing as an example, and I understood. About three years ago, he said to me, "Why did you come to learn to meditate?" Why not practice with writing? As long as you delve into the writing deeply enough, you can do whatever you want. ”
This book is about writing, and it's also about practicing with writing to help you see into life and clear your mind. The points of writing in the book can also be turned to running, painting, or anything else you love and are determined to do in life. When I read the chapters of the book to my friend, John Rowigan, president of clay supercomputers, he said, "What's going on, Natalie, you're talking about doing business." Doing business is the same, no different. ”
Learning to write is not a linear process, and there is no logical way to make a person a good writer from A to B to C. There is no simple and clear truth about writing that is enough to answer all doubts, and there are many truths about writing in the world. Practicing writing means that eventually you have to explore your life holistically. Teaching you how to join an ankle bone doesn't teach you how to patch up your tooth decay. A paragraph in this book may indicate that the writing must be concise and clear, which is to help you get rid of the abstract and loose edge of the writing. However, another chapter calls you to relax and write along with the fluctuations of your emotions, in order to motivate you to really say what needs to be said deep inside. Or in one chapter it says setting up a studio because you need to have a private writing space; but in the next chapter it says, "Get out of the house, get away from the dirty dishes, and go to the café to write." "Some tips apply at certain times, and some apply at other times. Every moment is different and needs to be corresponded in a different way to work. There is no right or wrong in everything.
When I teach my students, I always ask them to "write down the backbone", that is, to write the basic and clear ideas in their minds. But I also know that I can't just say, "Well, write things clearly and tell the truth." "We try out different techniques or methods in the classroom, and students finally get the hang of it and understand what they need to say and how to say it. But I'm not going to say, "Well, in the third class, when we've talked about this and that, you'll be well written." ”
The same goes for reading this book. You can read the book in one sitting, and the first time you finish it, the effect may be good; you can also open a chapter at will, read that chapter, and each chapter in the book is a complete paragraph in its own right. Relax while reading a book and slowly absorb it with your whole body and mind. And, don't just read the book, write it, believe in yourself, understand your needs, and use the book.
(Excerpt from Natalie Goldberg, "Write My Heart: How Ordinary People Express Themselves Through Writing", translated by Han Liangyi and Yuan Xiaocha, Guangxi Science and Technology Publishing House, 2016 edition)
China Teachers Daily, May 19, 2021, 9th edition