A Writer's Spirit: The rhythm and disruption of walking

My bat

Yesterday I was out for a hike in Arkansas when a huge butterfly fluttered into my face. It startled me, and I waved it away, barely brushing the tip of its wing with my hand.

And then I really looked, and even though it was early afternoon, gorgeous sunlight all around, that was no butterfly. It was a small reddish-brown bat.

Touching a daytime bat: that’s a gift to a writer. Heck, I’d buy a book of poetry with that title. It’s a real thing that happened, and it’s just begging to be forged into a metaphor for something. Sometimes we do this—we brush against the daytime bat, that thing we had no reason to look for, right there beside our hand ….

But this time around, I’ll keep the bat instead as a mere diary entry, as a thing that happened one beautiful spring day, in that state where almost anywhere you step, there might be a stone chamber beneath us.

Writing forces me to sit at a desk quite a bit, but I love to get out into the woods to renew myself. It’s a family thing; if the weather is reasonable, my whole crew tromps along a dirt path together.

When I walk, I’m always looking downward. I’m fond of snakes, and I’m always hoping to see one. Snakes belong to two worlds, and when they reveal themselves, they bring news of that other place, the one beneath the surface.

I almost never see them, for all my looking. I don’t have that kind of vision. My friend Sherri does. She knows how to look when she’s in nature, and she finds the most astonishing creatures, even though most are designed to stay hidden. I lived in the same town as Sherri for a long time, but I forgot to ask her to help me learn to see. I live in southern Missouri now, and I clomp through the woods all the time. There are snakes everywhere, and lizards, and salamanders, and fabulous bugs. Once, and possibly twice, I did see a tarantula, skittering off the path. Astonishing, this—when I moved here, I never would have dreamed they were all around me, better able to spot me than I them. Sherri would see them. I wish I had her gift.

I don’t walk to exercise, although it’s fine for that. In this, I’m like Henry David Thoreau, who wrote, “The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours … but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.” Thoreau was a big proponent of walking as a tool for improving our capacity for reflection—exercise being a bonus but not the aim of the activity.

Mind you, I’m no Thoreau. Rain keeps me in. So does a chill in the air. So, sometimes, does laziness. I don’t walk every day, although I’d like to be the kind of person who does. 

What I know about walking is that its rhythms lull us into meditation, more quickly and naturally and surely than focusing on our breath can do. And as we walk, we see things—we add to our catalog of reference points and memories in a way we can only do outdoors, away from the familiar. I can stay inside and watch classic TV and have an enjoyable time, but the downside is that no bat will stare into my face, and no tarantula will hide from my feet. Neither will I spot a celt or spear tip—other things I undoubtedly walk over and miss almost 100 percent of the time. (I’ve only ever found one arrowhead, and it was chipped at the tip, blunted, I don’t know when. Maybe it snapped in the ground, or maybe it was discarded by its creator, more annoying than deadly if launched. These are the notions the walker considers.)

Unlike time spent in our interior spaces, which become quickly and permanently familiar, walks—even along accustomed paths—always take us somewhere new. Thoreau knew this, too. He wrote, “An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours’ walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect to see.”

It’s true. Last week I was walking and found odd, closed, white lilies everywhere around me. I hadn’t seen anything like them before; it was a strange country, and I found it by training my eyes downward. (My friends helped me to identify them as white toad lilies, but I’m pretty sure, having seen yellow ones yesterday, that this isn’t quite right. The blossoms I saw were smaller, more singular, and more frail. I think it’s most probable that these were my very own flowers, scattered along my path by some benevolent creator just for me.)

Walking is restorative for anyone, but it has special benefits for writers, who seek at times both rhythm and disruption—both part of any amble—and who require a library of adventures and reference points if they are to have anything to commit to the page.

Walking gives these to me every day. Yesterday reminded me of how a breeze moving over water cools, how a collapsed cave roof can look newly fallen even after the passage of a millennium, or how a sturdy-looking stepstone sometimes sits atop a fulcrum in a stream.

And it taught me something new about bats, which, I just read, sometimes hunt during the daytime in the spring, when nights are cold and bugs are scarce. Have you ever seen a bat nearly snatch a moth from midair? I have. I’ve been that moth, and every single day I am that bat.

A Writer's Spirit: Building a meditation habit

It’s Lent, and I’m not Catholic; nor do I currently belong to a Protestant congregation that distributes ashes or fasts for the occasion, or even follows a liturgical calendar. But I’m up for any occasion for self-study, and when Lent rolls around, I try to find my own way to connect with the Divine.

I’m not one to deprive myself of anything I enjoy. As someone without a full-time job and benefits, privation for me is daily—and unremarkable. I’ve learned as much from it as I’d like to. There’s no need to cut out that daily cup of coffee when you drink Folger’s at home. 

When Lent rolls around, I’m more likely to adopt a habit for a period of time, and I try to make it one that I’d like to sustain for a lifetime. Sometimes these habits actually do stick; forty days or so is a sufficient period of time to begin a new approach to life.

My current Lenten practice is daily meditation—a longtime goal of mine. It sounds easy enough to make time each day for silence and breathwork, but the reality is that I put it off and lose the day’s opportunity.

It’s also very difficult to get alone time in a house with kids. A four-year-old sees a person sitting on the floor, and that just means one thing: play. The other day I was sitting, my hands on my knees in gyan mudra—that is, raised, my thumb and forefinger touching, my other fingers straight—when a cascade of Legos rained down on my palm.

My son likes making buses. This is what he calls anything with wheels, and these are such unlikely structures—elaborate staircases or towers or cages driven by leprechauns and superheroes, with minifigures lined up inside, eager for school.

I recently shared a social media post where I expressed regret about my difficulties with a meditation practice. In it, I mentioned that I was relying on guided meditations—and falling asleep halfway through.

My friends were so supportive. Several commented that guided meditations are perfectly good, and that I shouldn’t beat myself up for sleeping, and that following the lead of my body just made sense.

But I have a goal for meditation. I’d like to get in touch with myself. I want to be still and quiet with myself. For me, most days happen with the television on in the background; there’s a hockey game in front of me right this minute. (Go, Blackhawks.) A guided meditation can be a route to mindfulness, but to me it’s an extension of my usual state of passivity. There is something in me that is reluctant to accept an invitation into the silence. My relationship to my inner self is best described as wary detente.

This uneasiness with self infects my poetry, too. It’s why I most frequently write small poems that feature contained ideas. Longer poems are longer meditations, in reality—they’re just meditations that happen on the page. I don’t find poetry particularly fun to write, and even a small one takes a lot out of me.

So it would be good to build a habit of contemplation this season—good for my spirit and good for my writing. But some days the best I can do is accept what falls into my hand—to take those blocks and build a vehicle, something weird and fanciful that can carry me and my son to some other place, right here on the floor, together.

Spirit Sunday: Culling beauty from hateful words

Meditation takes a lot of forms, and for me, it often takes place with pen in hand.

When I’m writing, I tend to go deep and make discoveries about who I am at the core. And I renew my connection with what I regard as the source of all knowing, while also gaining reassurance and stillness. It’s what I try to achieve with seated meditation, but writing gets me there more reliably and meaningfully.

To get to where I want to go, I just lay down some words—sometimes I’ve thought of them a bit before starting, and sometimes, when I’m feeling a little dry, I just move my pen or fingers. A kind of energy seems to flow, as if the words on the page are sparking, pulling toward one another. That’s where the discoveries happen.

Yesterday, the first full day of a new president’s administration, I started a brand new writing meditation, and I’m interested to see where it goes.

What I plan to do is look for words from the new president each day. I don’t doubt that his words will be belligerent or spiteful or self-serving; he’s not a person who is prone to generous speech acts or writing.

I honestly can’t stand the bellicose, hateful posturing of this person, and his words are repugnant to me, and yet I like to stay on top of the news—it’s the duty of every citizen to do so, after all. That leaves me in a pickle; how will I take in vitriol from this terrible person, every single day?

I plan to take the worst words from this person who claims to know all the best words, and I’m going to sit with them in front of me. I plan to see how they move—what a loving perspective can do with these raw materials. And I’m going to shift them from hate toward love. I’m going to move and manipulate his words so that they represent everything our president does not—love, compassion, intelligence, and humor.

When you think about it, it’s the ultimate pussygrab. “I can do anything,” the president said in the famous bus video. And I can do anything, too. But my plan is to find the love that is there (surely there must be love?), and I will manufacture the love that is needed.

Words are seeds. And I won’t let the president’s hateful words take root in my garden. That doesn’t mean I can’t let them blossom into something beautiful—and that’s just what I plan to do.

Yesterday’s poem, sort of a nonce American sentence (seventeen syllables, usually presented as just one sentence), was based on the president’s lies about his inauguration crowd, and his accusation that the media was dishonest in reporting about numbers. The president said, in part, “We caught them. And we caught them in a beauty.” All of the words in this poem are from this brief utterance.

Looked out: a million people! Caught them in beauty—

now, that’s not a lie.

My plan is to post a new poem each day in a series I call “Love in His Throat.” I’ll guess I’ll go until I can’t stand it anymore—until the meditation no longer serves me well.

A time to dance

Yesterday was magical—one of those perfect late-summer days in the Ozarks, the sun not too hot, a bit of a breeze to boot. My family went apple picking; we had fun at the playground and on walking trails. And at the end of the day, I went to a class at the local holistic life center.

The class was described as a chakra dance class—in fact, it was “Chakradance,” a trademarked name for a holistic practice—but I have to admit, I thought the dance part was a metaphor. I guess it was the poet in me, but I pictured myself meditating, focusing on my chakras, thinking about dancing in a very figurative way.

The way the class works, though, or at least this installment of it, is that participants spread out in a dark room and they close their eyes. In just that way—all attention directed inward, no sense of what others are doing—we moved our bodies while focusing on each chakra in turn, root to crown.

I’m not disciplined enough to follow the rules precisely. I had to peek out between my lashes a few times, just to make sure the others were still there, that they were moving in similar ways, that they weren’t just lined up against a wall and silently laughing at my gyrations. You can’t be too careful, right?

But they weren’t. My lashy perspective revealed that they, too, were swinging their arms and swiveling their hips and moving their shoulders from side to side. And their eyes were shut, so they had me beat in that regard—not that it’s a competition.

I’ve been engaging with my spiritual self in a more focused way recently. I see it as a writerly practice—going inward to find both my inspiration and my discipline. Both are necessary to be a serious writer. Inspiration is no good if it never sits down; discipline does little without an occasional shove from the spirit.

Today I’ll go to church, and it will provide another chance for me to drill down into my core. No matter what my minister says—and she always says valuable things—the point is my taking the time to sit still and think about my spirit. Often I adopt an affirmation for the week—words that will take me instantly inward without a lot of preamble.

I don’t think it’s necessary to be religious to be a good writer. No one I know really thinks of me as religious, and my church—a Christian denomination, but one that encourages a personal approach and has no central shared theology—is looked at askance by many in my Bible belt city. Instead of church, I’m advocating a habit of mind—of deep exploration that doesn’t ignore the spirit, and that consults the center.

Writing is partly about good habits, i.e., going to the writing place (desk, chair, bed, floor) and, you know, writing—setting down some words. It is partly about the intellect, too—about thinking things up (and through) and being clever. I think the best writing transports the reader, though; a reader can feel connection sometimes not because the writer is a genius, but because you’re both tapping into something universal—the collective unconscious, the monomyth, the Godmind, or what have you. You don’t get to that place accidentally; you have to cultivate an awareness somehow. You can probably get there by reading Walt Whitman or by listening to jazz flute. Whatever works, right?

And that’s why I tried the chakra class, and it’s what had me spinning and waving my hula arms and doing a few seconds of the Twist—in the blissful and experiment-friendly dark, glimpsed, if glimpsed at all, through a forgiving veil of lashes.

Try new things in life and maybe you’ll try new things on the page. It’s not a bad plan—not a bad way to move through the world.

We Try Meditation

            With the New Year comes a new meditation regimen for me—and a reminder that I am squirmy by nature. Stopping and just being is a struggle for me, but I’ve determined that it is worth the attempt. Too much is passing me by; I need to pause, to let the important things begin to sink in.

            I am also inflexible, my body rejecting the lotus, with legs that refuse to bend but a spine that is all too willing. Once I am in position, the fleeting itch begins, jumping like a flea from back to head to arm to foot, then starting the circuit again. My regular life is not an itchy one. My meditative life is a constant, invisible rash.

            I choose to sit in the dark room in front of the Christmas tree, if only for the treat of opening my eyes to gentle, colored points of light. When I close my eyes, I can still make out soft hues from behind my lids. It’s a promising start. I begin the slow, deliberate breathing, pulling breath in through the nose and down to the diaphragm, holding it for a few beats, then expelling it gradually through my mouth before starting the process again.

            The breathing itself is always a revelation. I don’t often fill myself with oxygen, to the point that I can feel it in my abdomen. For me, it’s usually shallow breaths that don’t get much farther than the area of the sternum. Full lungs just feel good. Sometimes I even get a little air-drunk—lightheaded from the oxygen bubbles in my head.

            But the sitting is hard. My body is not as pliable as it once was, and the lotus position would require effort and pain. I’m no Zen master, so I’m not certain of this, but I don’t think it’s worth it to try. I opt to sit cross-legged and stretch my spine skyward. Within a minute I’m sagging, more like a bowling ball than a pond flower.

            Meditation shouldn’t be difficult. It’s as natural as, well, breathing, since that’s what it is. When the normal daily drive is to go and to move, it’s hard to make yourself breathe, as if your only job, your only imperative in life, is to process air.

            There are two things I can count on as I sit and breathe. One is the company of a cat, who is the very model of what it means to be fully present, if by “fully present” we mean “constantly underfoot.” As I sit, Salami Sandwich (that’s his name) comes to me and stretches out beside my right leg. He positions his head under my upturned palm. After a few moments, he gets tired of waiting to be petted and he bites me. I’m not sure if the act is intended as prompt or punishment, but I think there may be a lesson in it—something about not denying our true nature.

            After a few strokes, Salami settles down and begins to purr, a thrumming om that cats default to so effortlessly. I set my alarm to allow ten minutes of meditation—a fine start for a novice, I think—but I am mindful that another impediment is in the next room, and that at some point he will likely toddle in to where I sit and demonstrate his love by, oh, punching me in the eye or pulling my hair. It’s a gesture of love, really, for a little one—he is announcing his presence and making a play for my attention. Teaching nice touches is part of my job description.

            While I sit and breathe, I try to control the so-called monkey-mind, but part of me is always on the alert for a thwack or a pinch or at least a shout. In through the nose. Hold. Out through the mouth. In through the nose ….

            When I register his small feet approaching, I feel him stop in the doorway and look. I am doing something different—something quieter and strange. I wonder how he will respond, but I keep breathing. In through the nose ….

            What I would not have anticipated is the feel of that small person settling in beside me, sitting on my right side and leaning against me. As I breathe, he joins me, and I fold my arm around him. For a few moments we exist that way, quiet and still. Until the chime sounds, I’m sure I can feel a wash of color staining our skin.