The Sound of Paper Read online

  arc less the elderly cat sunning in the window and more the kitten with the ball of string, giving it a little bat to see where it goes.

  "Where does this thought go?" We start to chase our con­sciousness a little. We are roused out of our torpor, our ennui. Life becomes a matter of some interest and we become the interested bystanders and then the participants. All of this happens because we connect. All of this happens a page at a time, a pen stroke at a time. SCRATCH. Start from scratch. Just move your pen across the page and watch what happens to you.

  The Storm

  ATTENTION

  Try this: Set aside one hour's writing time. You may wish to take yourself to neutral territory, a cafe or coffee shop. Once there, settle in to write and to describe yourself as you would a literary character, in the third person. Not "I am fifty-four years old" but "She is fifty-four years old." Describe your looks, your attitudes, your perceptions. Try to draw a clear portrait of yourself, filled with telling details. In other words, pay attention to how you are and how you are doing.

  The sky over the Hudson River is dark green. In the Midwest this color sky means twisters. In New York it means big ruin, lightning bolts are dropping like jagged swords. A stiff, quick wind forces its way in my cracked-open windows, freshening the lace curtains. We are in for it, all the weather signs show. As luck would have it, I am going out. I am headed to the East Side, a forty-five-minute cab ride away. There I will see a read-through of a play by Rodgers and Hammerstein, one of their few failures, instructive for what it missed, not what "hit."

  The lightning bolts remind me of how we think and talk about creativity. The way we speak in dramatic terms of "breakthroughs." We even use the phrase "bolt of insight." Every so often, just like tonight's big storm, I do get a creative breakthrough or a bolt of Insight, but much more often creativity is pedestrian and nondra-matic, more a matter of suiting up and showing up and listening than standing on the edge of the cliff as the earth splits open at my feet. I experience writing more like taking dictation than giving it. I try to write something down, not think something up, and the sense of direction is important here.

  I think if we talked more realistically about what creativity feels like, we might let ourselves do a little more of it. If we thought of it as normal—98.6 on the human spectrum—instead of a sudden spike in our psychic temperature, we might let ourselves do it as a

  daily practice. We might all show up at the page or the easel and discover that there are reams of work waiting to move through us, right now, in the exact life that we have already. We might dis­cover that creativity is not a marathon event that we must gird our­selves for, whacking off great swaths of life as we know it to make room for it.

  Creativity is not aberrant, not dramatic, not dangerous. If any­thing, it is the pent-up energy of not using our creativity that feels that way.

  This is the centenary year of Richard Rodgers's birth, and throughout the entire city and all around the world, events are going on that celebrate the daily practice Rodgers made of his own creative gifts. I have read books of his letters to his wife. They say, "I love you—and I am working." I have read his autobiogra­phy that says, "I love working." I have even read a particularly sour and mean-spirited biography of the man that also concludes: "He loved his work."

  What all of this reading and focusing on Rodgers gives me is a sane model for what it is I try to do, showing up daily at both the page and the piano. I sit at the keys, seldom hearing any melody until I move my fingers across the keys and hear the melody locked within them. Nearly always, there is a song waiting to be written with words waiting to be sung. If I don't sit down at the piano, the song goes uncaptured. Perhaps it would visit again another day, perhaps not. It behooves me to have my butterfly net ready. And it is the same with words. The act of sitting down to the keys or to the lined page, the physical position of readiness, seems to cue the stream of thoughts to come forward now. I think the stream is always there, a current into which I tap at will. It is

  less a matter of "my" creativity than it is my being available to cre­ativity. Something or someone wants to enter the world through us, and we are the portals that allow that entrance to take place.

  Composers more than writers tend to acknowledge that music comes to them from a higher source of inspiration, that they are the gateways and not the source. The ego may rankle at first, but how much better to be the gateway for a large and mysterious something than the owner and guardian of a small and limited some­thing, my "share" of creativity. I like knowing that there is some­thing larger than myself, larger than all of us, that moves into the world when we are accessible to it as a conduit. I like having songs and stories come through me. I like knowing that my art is in a sense none of my business, not "my" art at all.

  The sky is flooded with water and with light. It shines out like shook foil. Great claps of thunder rumble above the city. The sky­scrapers are getting their parapets shampooed. It is a storm of storms. Something greater and grander than ourselves is having a time of it tonight, and I am glad. It draws things to scale. It makes it clear how my choice is to stand aloof from or to try joining this magnificent something that is so huge and so breathtaking and so certainly filled with power and light. How much better to say, "I am a part of all of this, hallelujah!" Better by far than laboring to make "my" great novel, "my statement." Why not listen and write what seems to want to be written rather than writing all capital I's?

  Gaining Through Loss

  THE STORM

  Try this: Nothing invites creative break­throughs so successfully as walking. Even a twenty-minute Walk is long enough to fling open the inner door to insight and inspiration. Take a twenty-minute Walk. Take note: What ideas come to you? What insights, inspirations, and realizations? We speak of a body of knowl­edge, and walking gives us access to exactly that. We embody far more truth than we often allow ourselves to contact. Walking puts us in touch.

  I woke this morning wrapped in loss. I was caught between sleep and waking, living again in a house that I had once lived in, loved, and lost—lost once and for all to a persistent and dangerous prowler whom we could not rout. Lying in my New York bed, in my New York bedroom, in the midst of my busy and productive New York life, I was back in New Mexico in my house full of saltillo tiles with the scratching sound of my pack of dogs as they waited eagerly for me to be up and with them for the day.

  I once had five acres, seven horses, and seven dogs. I do not have them now. If I let myself, I miss every inch—apple trees, wooden fences constantly in need of repair, acequias gently slough-ignwith water and stray twigs on our irrigation days. I miss every twitch, every hair of each of the dogs, given away, one at a time, to loving friends. I miss the silken muzzle of each horse, nuzzling me for an apple or carrot, saying, "That's it? Hay?" when I fed them each morning.

  If I let myself, I cannot be in the now because I am overcome by the power of the then, the beauty and grace of all that I have left behind. But the prowler could not be caught by any known arm of the law, and it was too hard to stay on, sleeping at night with all of my dogs banked against danger, with every scratch of a twig at every window sending us all into high alert.

  So I cannot let myself linger in that past.

  I throw back the covers. I am in New York. I head to the kitchen and make a pot of strong British tea. I take a cup and retreat to the living room, where I put myself to the page. I start writing, and as I do, a sense of dailiness and normalcy returns. Gradually, I ebb back from that past house into this one. The apple trees outside my New Mexico windows are replaced by the American elms down in Riverside Park. The saltillo tiles give way to the parquet floors in this very nice apartment. Times have changed. The old house is gone. This is the new house. "It is all right," my writing tells me. "Life is not only bearable with loss. It is beautiful."

  Life is beautiful, but we must have enough emotional equilib­rium to experience it that way. If our inner resources are too mea­ger, we
must take action to restore them. It is too risky to blame life for our own lack of living. Life is full of sorrow, and sour, but it is also full of sweet.

  For so many of us, it is hard to be both large enough and small enough to hold the range of life. Without a spiritual connection to something larger than ourselves, we lose our bearings, our be­ings, our sense of scale. Of course we do. The human experi­ence is intricate, painful, and very beautiful. We lead lives filled with loss and filled with gain. Without a tool to metabolize what we live through—and for me that tool is Morning Pages—and even with it, it is hard to process who we have been and who we have become. So much happens to each of us. It is hard to make peace. Life is like the sea. A wave of memory sweeps in that threat­ens to overwhelm us and then the wave retreats, leaving us to won­der at what has been washed ashore.

  Today I feel staggered by the power of my emotions, the pull of the past. Today I must work to have faith, to trust the newness

  that has been made from my loss. To trust what has been put in place of all that went before. I must live, as the wise ones tell us, one day at a time. This means I must turn to my tool kit and pull from it the tool that has served me longest and best. I must write. One day at a time, I can chip away at the musical play that I am writing now.

  One day at a time, I can love the two dogs I now share a life with, two rescues from lives as torn apart as my own. These new dogs are beautiful. I can work to make their lives stable and happy, I can give them walks, not along an acequia, not through the fra­grant sage, but chasing squirrels along a stone wall in Riverside Park. It is enough. The present is big enough to hold the past. I must let the present enlarge enough to become rich and deep. I must live in it, not just occupy its time.

  Morning Pages remind me that while I cannot choose much of what happens to me in my life, I can choose how I respond to what happens. The trick is getting small enough to inch forward. The past is huge. The future may be huge as well. What remains for me, what is given, is to do the small tasks of the day. First among those tasks is Morning Pages, the daily writing of three pages that draws me into the life I have now, the choices I can make today to find beauty in what is given to me.

  Ripening

  GAINING THROUGH LOSS

  Try this: Do not be surprised if you are resistant to this task. It is very powerful—so powerful that in many cultures, it is considered a religious act. I am talking about doll-making. Draw to mind a loss you wish to memorialize or trans­form. Now, using whatever materials strike you as appropriate, make a doll that reflects your many emotions. Some dolls involve frippery and finery. Others are made from twigs and sticks. You will know the right form for you, and it is that form you should choose to make. Be prepared for a powerful shift in consciousness.

  The sky is a dull, throbbing gray. It looks like rain but doesn't rain. Instead, the green buds on trees push palpably outward into bloom. A time-lapse photo of the park below my writing window would show a greener, leafier afternoon than morning.

  We blossom just as the trees blossom, but we cooperate so much less. While the trees lean into the approaching seasons and submit themselves to the will of nature, we fight the richness be­ing made of ourselves and we fight it with "busyness." Too many people, too many books, newspapers, and events, crowd our con­sciousness for our own ripening to occur. We are distracted from the matter at hand: another soul being brought into maturity.

  Life rushes past us pell-mell. We book our days from morning to evening and then wonder why they lack succulence and savor. We go months, years even, without talking to once-cherished friends. We are too busy living a life to have a life worth living. Walk on the streets. How many strangers meet your eyes? We walk quickly, eyes averted, busy each with our own thoughts, and if someone looks at us directly, that is intrusive. We feel the same way about staring at someone we pass. We act as if we have no right to inhabit this life we are fully and certainly inhabiting. The passing parade must "pass"; we cannot be caught sucking on it like a candy lozenge to get its sweetness and taste.

  I am alone today. My roommate has gone to Florida for two days, and the house is quiet except for the occasional restless stir­ring of one of the dogs. This morning at six-thirty, hours before I planned to be up, the smallest dog, Charlotte, a West Highland terrier, set up a frantic scratching at my bedroom door. She had decided the night was over, that it was time for company and cheer. Not from me it wasn't. When I emerged an hour later, unable to ignore her pleas, I discovered she had made good use of her time by savaging the contents of my purse, paying particular attention to a small bottle of allergy pills, which she had opened and scattered in parti-colored amulets across the living-room car­pet. "All right, I will walk you," I all but snapped, fastening leashes to Charlotte and her companion, Tiger Lily, a cocker spaniel. Out we charged into the gray and luminous morning. The air in the park just off the Hudson was heavy with moisture. Daffodils and jonquils glowed like candles. It was beautiful to be up and out. No matter that the neighbors were still abed and the little park deserted.

  I read most of the morning. I am rereading my friend Natalie Goldberg's books, cherishing her Technicolored prose, as vivid as salami on rye. Natalie grew up on Long Island in a split-level tract home where food was the focus of life, and food remains in her pages a focus for life and a token of how well or ill a life is being led. "Is it delicious?" Natalie's books are succulent, filled to burst­ing with colors and flavors. I am reading them to double-check myself—am I being authentic, real with myself, with what I think and what I have to say?

  It is good to have some alone time. To drop down into my thoughts and into my life with no one expected home and noth-

  ing required of me for a while. I can think about what I choose and whom I choose. I can leaf through my Rolodex and phone those friends who are missing in action—some of them for years. Perhaps because I have lived a life in many places—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Taos—I have led a disconnected life. I must work to stay in touch with those who are near and dear to me

  om each locale, and inevitably as I shift places, I shift friendships with only the mail and e-mail to save me as I try to keep up a stream of notes that say, "Still thinking of you, although you are there and I am here."

  In my friend Natalie's books, she makes frequent mention of

  death—how it draws everything to scale and makes everything

  living so much more beautiful and poignant. I am fifty-four years

  old. I do not know how many more years I am allotted or how

  long I will remain on this earth, which I love. I do know that I

  do better being here when I try to be here consciously. To see the

  same world with a strangers eyes. To walk my neighborhood streets

  us a visitor might, with a sense of wonder.

  This afternoon I took myself for a brief walk. I stopped at a side­walk table laden with books. One book—for ten dollars—was irre-sistible to me. It was a book on the origin of words. I love words and handle them the way a baby does a first string of beads: each one so bright and such a different color and shape! The little book promised the origin of eight thousand words, among them "abyss" (from the Greek "bottomless"). How could I not want to know? This is what I wonder as I move through New York, crowded with its all-but-faceless crowds: How could I not want to know?

  I spend one third of the year in Taos, a tiny town of less than five thousand people, and the rest of the year in New York, a

  metropolis. In Taos I am a known face, and in New York I am a faceless face, one more amid many. In Taos I cherish the "known" faces that I see in restaurants, at the post office, at the copy shop, each of us on our rounds. In New York I cherish my anonymity as I make the same rounds. But in New York I am always wonder­ing, "Who are you?" and it is the promise of the city with its many stories that keeps me coming back like an avid reader daz­zled by the library shelves.

  RIPENING

  Try this: Go to a lo
cal five-and-dime or phar­macy. Select five postcards that lend the place you live a little magic. Set aside a half hour and take the time to write out five cards to far-flung friends and relatives. It's enough to just say "thinking of you." Everyone likes to be thought of.

  To Be Independent, Depend on God

  In the days when spiritual beliefs held more intellectual cur­rency, it was routine for artists to speak of divine inspiration. Prayer was a part of everyday life and a working tool in an artist s reper­toire. Writers prayed for plotlines, composers prayed for melody, painters prayed that their brush be guided. Masterpieces were the result.

  In our modern lives, it can seem quaint, otherworldly, or unbe­lievable to ask for—and expect—divine guidance in our creative endeavors. We have lost the sense of God as a working partner. He is too distant and too busy for affairs like our own. With the crush of cities, the crowds pressing through the subway turnstile, the jostling bodies on a midtown street, it is easy to believe this assess­ment, and yet, is it valid?

  Thomas, a young composer, seeks spiritual guidance daily. He asks for help, and he gets it—sometimes as a melody line, some­times as the impulse to organize his arranging space. Each time he acts on the guidance received, goodness and creativity flow from his pen. For Thomas, asking for guidance is both a habit and a necessity. He takes great comfort in the spiritual forces he senses contact with. Composing is a lonely business, and it gives him a sense of companionship, praying for guidance and receiving it.