Writing is something that brings me pleasure, something that brings me relief.  In a way it might have appeared that part of my psyche had, if you will, gone underground  to express itself.  Was this the sense of having lost some sense of the dominant male side of the persona, that prompting a depressive reaction, a withdrawal, a retreat within, as if to work things out.  But it was part of my nature, I guess, my brain chemistry, to find the need for the subtlety of the mind that writing allows, the going into grey areas, the embrace of both sides of a thing.  It seemed to me that my own version of the human creature had a long underwater life, strange to the rest, communicating somehow through the silence of inner thought to no one in particular, a search for the lasting peace within which one must find.

Was it precipitated by not fighting one of those young Republican fools over a foolish matter, or wasn't it rather generated by discovering an even deeper love and respect for the written word in a classroom freshman year that set the wheels in motion.

I'm glad the Buddhist talks about the subtle mind, the one each of us possesses, found in the quiet of meditation.  By the light cast by the subtle mind I could see optimistically the benefit of Buddhist thought, and it pleased me.  If you're a writer maybe you're always looking for meaning, always searching, and to such ends that kind of thinking is satisfying, in the way the figure of Jesus is, understandably, to other people, the passive suffering that contains within it the great wisdom and the certain knowledge that the poor and the meek and the suffering and the mourning are happy salt of the earth.

And so the sort of beaten-down no longer dominant male swam on, writing, keeping his place clean as best he could, never amassing the funds necessary for dominance, almost someone on the dole, but for the work that kept him safe for the time being by showing up, a job that had its own underwater aspect to it.

Life I could not explain, beyond noting that it sometimes hurt, and that one was vaguely trying to develop into something through a daily struggle to get through either work or the lonesome quality of rest and the necessary day off.  I could honestly make no pretense that I was much beyond a person trying to be kind in a world in which that is not enough.  It's not enough to be kind if you can't pay the rent, and that would sap anybody's nerves.

But there was my journey, my innate navigating system subtly at work, and it was as if the world kept telling me it was okay, a good thing, to keep writing.  It was as if I were working on a basic human problem, only dimly aware of its nature, facing it with personal experience, in pursuit of some kind of science or poetry pertaining to it.


In writing, you find you almost have to leave conscious thoughts aside, being that they are necessarily too much of the dualistic way of looking at things.  Writing must be like the shoot that grows up from the bottom, through the water, to become in the air the blossom.  Thus are the conscious thoughts from a realm of pressure and weight, a need for air and light.  The thoughts above, now that they are written down, will be tossed away, a necessary friction against the  deeper peace of calm and meditation.