Being,Writing, Hollowness and the Zen of it…

Long silences and lonely pauses have kept me constant company these last many weeks. It has been over sixty days since I wrote anything worth reading, or experiencing. This is not “writer’s block”, not existential angst, creative bankruptcy or any form of euphoria that usually fells the writing muse. I haven’t written anything because I choose not to write, I choose to imprison the words, and make them struggle for survival.

Every long silence and lonely pause bears witness to the death of a part of me, there was a time I used to mourn that but that faculty has died too. The inessential falls by the wayside, leaving nothing but a hollowness bound by a shell of what was once essential.

There is a story I once read about a group of Zen students exploring the area around the monastery chancing on an ancient cast iron bell and remarking on its beauty and craftsmanship, when a monk emerged from his home to ring the bell, they commented on the workmanship and in conversation with him asked him how old the bell was. The monk placed his hand on the metal engravings and told them it was over five hundred years old and then he points to the void in the bell and said the emptiness within was eternal. The monk proceeds to ring the bell and once its sound had faded asked the students where the sound came from- whether it was from the metal casing or from the emptiness inside.

When I began this venture of writing one original piece a month, it was with the intent of accomplishing two things, not directly related to the craft of writing, the first was to cultivate discipline and be able to write on cue irrespective of the circumstances surrounding me, essentially an exercise in relentlessness. The second was to learn to sustain the focus and energy on a project, this is my third blog and it’s also the one that’s been up the longest and has the most number of subscribers and people viewing it. Did I meet these objectives? I did, most of the time and definitely in spirit. Is this enough? Not anymore.

Over the last two years, I have used this platform to experiment with new styles, different writing voices, and ideas I found novel. But I always constrained myself to the construct of the short story, largely because there was a time when I thought words were cheap and treated them as such. Authoring a short story helps you understand the value of each word especially when you aspire to speak your piece in a thousand words or less. This two year experiment has helped me be a bit braver about the kind of writing I want to do, the voice of caution and negativity which hounds me every time I write is a bit more muted and I find myself being able to look at the kind of writing I have done and be extremely dissatisfied. The only thing that sates me is that the stories I have authored have potential for being something more and I find myself wishing I could re-write them in a way that uses some more of that potential.

The story of the bell and the Zen students appealed to me because I have been wondering about the quality of my writing and the originality of my writing voice. Every time I read anything I find myself drawn to the experience that a writer shares with the world and the best stories I have read made the writer’s imagination a large part of that experience. Imagination is like that void, the space that’s trapped in the bell- the nothingness that intersects with the real to produce the experience that continues to exist in the ether of nothing. My biggest complaint with my writing is that I did not assert my imagination in a bolder way. In the context of the story of the bell this has led to my writer’s voice sounding like a lot of dull clanging and not enough chiming. That I am able to tell the difference between the two leads me to hope that I have evolved some sense of discernment.

The hollowing out continues and I am loathed to publish anything till I am satisfied it’s reflective of the new voice that’s emerging in this process. I am ending this project in creative productivity; it has achieved more than it was intended to.

Poems which have played on in the background as my thoughts rambled to this realization-

Trappings                                 

The illusion of travel

The illusion of change

The illusion of evolution

How easily we get busy

How easily we confuse ourselves

With the temporary

Identifying with the trappings

With nature’s lovely recipes

For form and space

Forgetting our eternity

Its always a joy when you find inspiration in another human being and when you are able to relate to the emotional process of a shared ambition- in my case to be a better story teller. Sarah Kay is someone I am always amazed by simply because I find my self wanting to be as  bold and courageous with my story voice.

Sarah Kay: How many lives can you live?

Alpha Mike Foxtrot.