Moving Muse

Inspiring Resources to Keep Your Creativity Flowing

Summer 2007

Embrace the darkness.  That may seem like an odd message especially for summer.  But the solstice has passed, and already 2007's days grow shorter.  Rather than deny it, trying to hold onto that last summer evening hour as if it were a rambling lover, accept the fact of darkness.  

I'm not talking about emotional muck or angst or evil or any other baggage our culture attaches to darkness.  Embracing the darkness suggests the following ideas for writing and attempting to live with awareness:

Avoid simplistic  perspectives and easy resolutions.  Every story has its uniqueness, every outcome its own beautiful twist.  Letting a poem close in the dark means letting go of control.  That's a tough practice for a Zen boy who confuses self-discipline with control.

Avoid easy dichotomies, oppositions, and enemy-making.  Would that more of us, of any political stripe, could admit the dark more often. My favorite characters I love to hate and then realize that I am them.
 

Venture into and accept uncertainty. I find my way in getting lost.  I also have no problem stopping to ask a late-night gas station cashier or a bard owl for directions.  When drafting a poem or essay or book chapter, I often know I've delved into a fresh domain if I feel a little lost and wonder how I will find my way home.

Let go of attachment to outcome.  Writing a poem, essay, or book chapter (or a situation in my life) might take me to the other side of the woods - exactly where I didn't expect to go.  But here I am.  Why fight it?  I'll build a fire.

Move toward the borderlands - where distinctions and boundaries bleed.  In the borderlands is where metaphor, paradox, juxtaposition, and irony become a way of life.  You can see the borderlands more clearly in the dark.  So close your eyes.  Or better, close them half-way and see with a softened gaze. 

Forget what you look like.  In the dark, no one can see you.  So when you write, forget that "you" are writing the piece.  When you paint, forget your name. Don't channel Marcel Duchamp.  Just get over yourself.  Focus on the story or the essay or the poem or--better--the sweet music of the words that want to play out on the page.   

Those tenets sum up my yoga practice, too.  I admit it: I distrust "removers of darkness." 

Forewarned by the '60s' dangers of visionaries' self-delusion and self-indulgence, a growing number of people in their 20s to 50s  sense that mysticism doesn't have to be something "other" or outside of our everyday waking experience or apart from social activism.

That's the gist of the article Jeff wrote for this month's issue of Conscious Choice.  It explores the heart of the borderlands on a social and cultural level.

Check it out and let us know what you think: Conscious Choice.

 

Send us your stories, musings, reflections, and jpeg photos on this season's theme - MUSE ON THE (DARK) BORDERLANDS.  Visit our MUSE IT page for details & guidelines.  Visit our Spring '07 forum, too, to review EARTH & WRITING musings.