Beginner's Mind

Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself.... In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

— from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Scribble in Pink and Orange

This post is part of the Moms' 30-Minute Blog Challenge: More time for kisses, less fuss.

It's NOT Your Fault You Suck

I take it back. Whether you are awesome or you suck, the credit or the blame goes to your genius—according to the ancient Greeks, anyway.

It's Your Fault You Suck

As described on a recent-ish (two weeks ago! I'm so slow....) interview on the Brian Lehrer Show, The Genius in All of Us, Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong by David Shenk argues that, for the most part, genius is not in the genes. Though some people may be genetically advantaged (or disadvantaged), these advantages do not in themselves "cause" genius. Far more important is practice practice practice and a persistent mindset — a hunger, really — that drives one to learn from failure and push oneself beyond one's current abilities. Shenk does not claim that talent is solely the result of practice or that there is a recipe for creating genius, but he does believe that by thinking about giftedness in the ways we usually do (i.e., that it is innate), we are probably selling ourselves short.

These ideas don't seem to be particularly new to me. Anyway, as a feminist, I've long been suspicious of arguments that claim that any particular human qualities are innate, because such arguments have tended to be used to keep women in whatever place the culture finds most convenient. (I've just read Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's take on this tendency in her preface to Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species and was moved to tears.) Nevertheless, new or not, I find the idea liberating: it doesn't take genius to be a genius, it just takes hard work!

But of course, with freedom comes responsibility, and thus, I suppose, the somewhat angry calls to the Brian Lehrer Show. Easier by far to believe in the specialness, the otherness, of genius than to find out who you really are, dig in, work hard ...

Trust Yourself ... Except Maybe at 1:00 a.m.

I was honored to be included in a reading at the KGB Bar this January. The reading was recorded, and though the video was posted to YouTube quite some time ago, only late last night did I venture to watch it. I watched with a sense of fascinated narcissism and repelled shame, and I was left with a sense of dissatisfaction with my work. So I can make people laugh, big deal, so what?

An hour or so later, at 1 a.m., I was still awake and pacing in our bedroom, trying to settle the mysteriously unsettled Critter in my arms. For some reason (the YouTube video? the fact that I did not write that evening, as I usually do after the Critter goes to bed and before I begin my evening hours of paid work?) all I could think about was that maybe I should just give up poetry altogether, except as a casual thing. Give it up because ... the dissatisfaction is too unsatisfying, the longing too painful.

On the one hand, I don't give up poetry because I doubt that the painful longing would vanish if I did. Quite the opposite: through high school I freely and happily drew and painted on my own, and in college, when I no longer had time to do so, I forgot how; and now, just setting foot inside an art supply store is almost unbearably painful. Surrounded by tools I no longer know how to use, I feel an ache as though from the ghost of a limb I myself tore off.

On the other hand, I see that some part of me (my shitbird, of course) is holding me back. The last statement in Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" haunts me (and yes, usually in German): Du musst dein Leben ändern. Though I do keep changing my life and giving things up (eating meat, eating sushi, running marathons, holding a regular job, following baseball any more than casually, sleeping eight hours each night), whatever it is that must change seems to remain unchanged.

I am beginning to realize that what must change is actually quite simple and already included in my rules for being a poet: write every day, and trust the process. Like giving myself over to the breath in zazen ...

My To-Do List

Lately I've had Ogden Nash on my mind, specifically his poem "Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man," which hit me like a kick to the gut the first time I heard it, probably on WNYC. In the poem, Nash compares the sins of omission with the sins of commission and concludes that if you are going to sin, at least to "remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing." After all, "you never get any fun / Out of things you haven't done ..."

Indeed not. Alas, mine are the sins of omission, of procrastination, of the 4-page-long to-do list that includes things I have failed to do (or to let go of) for weeks, months, even a year or longer. Mine are the sins of the still-unwritten thank-you notes, the stacks of paper on my desk, the neatly folded shower curtain on top of my bureau (why?), the old computer equipment in a closet (including a Mac PowerBook Duo and its dock; again, why?), the boxes of clothing and gently used items for the Salvation Army piled in a corner of the bedroom, the other boxes of who-knows-what in the living room, the fans gathering dust in another corner of the living room ...

The situation has improved much since the Critter was born, at which time the nursery was still more or less a storage room for miscellaneous items and the surface of my desk was not to be found. And yet I still find myself thinking and thinking and thinking about what remains to be done. It's shitbird thinking, and it's tricky to withstand. On the one hand, I have to take care of these things. On the other hand, I must not treat the necessity of taking care of these things as an obstacle in itself. For example, while I have to get my desk clean (and then keep it clean), in the meantime I have to keep writing anyway. I must not tell myself, desk too cluttered, can't write. I must not sit there thinking and thinking and thinking about the cluttered desk during the time I should be writing. Thinking about the desk doesn't get it clean, and it doesn't get any poems written!

The Artist in the Office

Yesterday, a conversation with writer and artist Summer Pierre on the Brian Lehrer show. Her book is The Artist in the Office. Of particular interest was her insight that the office job is not necessarily a soul-sucking affair; it can actually be a source of material.

As for me, I create my art at the office, which is in the bedroom and next to the nursery. I'm working hard at Rule #1. In a photo taken yesterday, the ugly truth.

Today, a little better.

The Critter at the office.

Keeping the Shitbird at Bay

I've passed the last six months working too much and too hard. I would like to say that in the meantime, I've forgotten who I am, except that I have always worked too much and too hard. In truth, I've forgotten not who I am, but who I'd like to be. The self-defeating part of me, which my writing teacher calls "the shitbird," would like me to keep busy, keep forgetting, keep going through life as though life were something to get through. Meanwhile, over the past several weeks, even while I was working, I watched myself and my usual ways of writing and not writing, and I discovered my rules for being a poet. Though they are obvious, I do forget them. I'll be posting them over my desk.

1. Keep your desk clean.
2. Write every day.
3. Keep a journal.
4. Read poetry.
5. Read about poetry.
6. Write a shitty draft and trust the process that follows.
7. Create a persona.
8. Be aware of the emotional core of the poem.
9. Remember that no-one wants to hear you complain.

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho ...

More things we like

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm taking in a lot more work these days. Between taking care of the Critter, getting my work done, and that other thing ... what is that other thing??? ... oh, right: sleep ... I find I have much less time to pursue my personal projects, such as this blog. I do not wish to neglect these projects altogether, however! Thus, my goal is to publish one post each week. You may have noticed that I have not met that goal thus far this year, and so I encourage you to subscribe to this blog.

Meanwhile, I also encourage you to check out 43 Folders, a blog I've been checking into recently, especially if you do creative work. (Don't check out this blog instead of doing your creative work, though!) This recent post about the desire to "feel creative"—as opposed to the reality of actually doing creative work—has been a recent inspiration. Lately, of course, I have been neither feeling creative nor doing much of my own creative work (see above), but the Critter won't be four months old forever....