Wednesday, April 16, 2014
N is for Nothing and plenty of it!
t's the A to Zed Challenge! I'll be posting the first half of the month from Ottawa where I'm staying with my youngest and his partner and their newest - a little guy who was born the end of March. Yay!
Theme? Writing and Life is what comes to me... how to balance the writing life with the other tugs you may have...
The ABCDEaria of the Writing Life -
N is for Nothing
"I've got plenty of nothing and nothing's plenty for me."
It goes on but I won't. Cuz it will lead to me singing all of Barbra Streisand's hits and I ain't got the time for that. Plus, as I write this (though not as you read it) I'm still in a home with a baby! Though I think the little gaffer might like Streisand.
Ahem... to today's topic. Why does the artist in need of balance need nothing? Well the answer is self-evident in the question but I will elaborate. We don't HAVE anything. We just don't. We might have moments where we rub up against stuff, money, success, love, a garden and a big blue dragon, but HAVE it? Nope. When we think we can actually have something, like hold it in one mode forever, like a baby's expression, like last month's rent, like the jeans I wore in grade nine - well, that my friend is delusion and delusion doesn't help us keep in balance. It helps us be good corporate citizens, buying and longing, and striving and all that, but it keeps us unbalanced as we strive for something that doesn't remotely exist. We must want nothing to create because that is what creation comes out of - a big nothing - and it goes to that all the way along - EXCEPT while we are in process. Sure, I'm a house-holder not a yogi so I know we have to pay the bills and it is nice to have family and friends who have our back but don't rest on it - don't make it the reason for creating - create for the good harmonious feeling of it - or the hellish impossibility of it (same coin really). Sell it so you can make the next making but that's the only reason.
Okay. That's it. Can't help it. I put in the letter and the rants flow out.
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3 comments:
Jan - It's quite true really that there's nothing that's really permanent - nothing that could never change. I think if we truly accept that, then we can appreciate what we do have and not crave and long for what we don't have. Harder to do than to write.
You are SO right! We don't own anything we are merely caretakers. The object is to be good caretaker both of our "precious stuff" and of the world.
Nice post - and true that none of these material possessions, or moments in time, are really eternal.
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