Toward a creed
I am a religious man. These days I rise before 8, make coffee and sit at the morning desk, notebook open, facing the light to ward off shreds of despair, gold weight of sun falling across paper and skin. I write. Writing is my religion, or god, if you will. I depend on it the way others depend on a higher power: for balance, insight, sanity, salvation, understanding, compassion.
A friend asked yesterday whether I always feel inspired. Definitely not. My writing practice is not the place where inspiration happens. Sometimes weeks or months go by when it feels monotonous and vapid. Morning pages are the screen on which ideas shine whenever something happens to project them. Unless I keep the screen open, the shaft will be absorbed and lost in forgetfulness. So I write like any monk prays, awaiting word from the divine.
I don't believe in the supernatural or a spirit separate from mind and body. You might call me unspiritual, and technically you would be correct. But belief systems hinge not on technicalities. I've been called a rationalist, but that is inaccurate. Emotions and imagination frequently defy reason, yet are real as any dogma.
I have been reading Heaven's Coast, a memoir by poet Mark Doty recounting the death of his partner, Wally Roberts, from AIDS. Profoundly and beautifully crafted, the text looks to nature for wisdom about mortality, reminiscent of Annie Dillard's mystical style.I long for a kind of spiritual intensity, a passion, though I can certainly see all the errors and horrors spiritual passions have wrought.
Fair to say, I share Doty's longing and cynicism. Whatever lessons we take from the world will inevitably be subjective and imperfect. We need beliefs to make sense of things, but they must be tempered by tolerance and openness to change. Otherwise our truth is dead.
Doty recalls some psychic experiences he had, and reflects upon their meaning:Could metaphoric thinking, the sort of work that artists do to apprehend their reality, be the same function of the mind, applied in a somewhat different way? My way of knowing experience is to formulate a metaphor which describes or encapsulates a particular moment; it is a way of getting at the truth.
I too have had psychic experiences, intense mystical encounters with Jesus Christ. Several such incidents happened in late 1995 during the deepest throes of depression. They seemed real at the time. It would be too simplistic to call them untrue, or diminish them as the delusions of a tortured mind. I now understand them as manifestations of my own survival instinct, grasping for handholds in the dark well where shame-based religion had cast me. Jesus told me, "You are alright. Be still and wait." Sitting by my lonely pillow at night, he held me. I (he) gave myself what I needed.
Now we need a new mythology, one that does not invest heavily in a transcendent ethereal future at Earth's expense. We must envision our reincarnation in our bequeathal to younger generations. The whims of nature have granted us a gift. It is not our charge to exploit or manipulate it (our best efforts at management will be ill-informed and dubiously motivated), but to honour, enjoy and draw sustenance, while depleting it little as possible.
I am a writer. I believe in metaphor. When I die, my words will live a while longer. Someday they too will vanish or become unintelligible, but by then my ideas will have threaded themselves into the tapestry of human understanding. I might not have a mansion waiting for me in heaven, but I hope to plant a few gardens during my lifetime. I might not spend eternity praising the almighty, but I'll write a few hundred poems before I die.
Another photo from Paris is posted in doorwindowwall.